


What They Wouldn't Do

by Ashevillain



Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, I'm not kidding, Like really slow, Original Character(s), Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-19
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-31 07:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 33
Words: 337,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3970060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashevillain/pseuds/Ashevillain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah Corrigan is a secretary at Orion Incorporated, a shady company previously owned by Wilson Fisk. When Daredevil begins investigating Orion in an attempt to take them down, Sarah accidentally stumbles upon his true identity, and he's not happy about it. Despite her best efforts to avoid the vigilante after figuring out who he is, she quickly finds herself on the receiving end of a Daredevil interrogation in a dark alley. Eventual Matt/OC, set post Season One.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Check Mark

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, everyone! Welcome to the first fanfiction I've written in about seven years. Daredevil just drew me in and wouldn't let go.
> 
> Two things you should know before you begin reading:
> 
> 1\. This story does deal with some dark thematic content, especially in terms of some of Matt's more questionable personality traits, like his violence and anger issues. There's nothing terribly graphic, but I do explore how Matt's darker side affects all areas of his life, including his (future) love life. So while the story is eventually Matt/OC, don't expect romance right away. When I say this is a slow burn fic, I mean slow.
> 
> 2\. I started writing this after Season One, so no new characters or plotlines from Season Two will play into the plot of it (although there may be a small cameo or two late in the story). The only canon fact that I ignore is the costume change at the end of Season One. Partially because some of my plot points needed Matt to still be in the black outfit that he is more easily injured in, and partially because, well, I like the black outfit better. I want to hang onto it for just a little longer. But at some point I'll address the issue of needing heavier armor. 
> 
> That's all you need to know, I think. Enjoy!

Author's Note: Hello, everyone! Welcome to the first fanfiction I've written in about seven years. Daredevil just drew me in and wouldn't let go.

Two things you should know before you begin reading:

1\. This story does deal with some dark thematic content, especially in terms of some of Matt's more questionable personality traits, like his violence and anger issues. There's nothing terribly graphic (it stays within the T rating that it currently has) but I do explore how Matt's darker side affects  _all_ areas of his life, including his (future) love life. So while the story is eventually Matt/OC, don't expect romance right away. When I say this is a slow burn fic, I mean slow.

2\. I wrote this after Season One but before Season Two, which premiered in between Chapters 20 and 21 of this story. So if there are any inconsistencies in timelines or backstory revealed in Season Two, that's why. The only canon fact from Season One that I ignore in this story is the costume change at the end of the season. This is partially because for certain plot points I needed Matt to still be in the black outfit that he was more easily injured in, and partially because I just could not get my head around the red suit with the crazy horns, even though I  _know_  that's his signature look in the comics. I want to hang onto the black outfit for just a little longer. But at some point I'll address the issue of needing heavier armor, don't worry. So don't be confused by the timeline if you see mention of the black outfit instead of the red.

That's all you need to know, I think. Enjoy!

* * *

_Chapter One: Check Mark_

Sarah Corrigan's father was never a truly bad man. He had his poor qualities—a heavy gambling habit and a blind spot for the consequences of his actions being the most obvious—but he was not cruel or unkind. Sarah had to remind herself of this every time she arrived at her job as a secretary for an extremely shady company that was formerly owned by Wilson Fisk himself. Her father had not meant to get her stuck in these circumstances, she repeated to herself. He had no control over the situation. All the same, as she looked up at the looming gray building that was home to Orion Incorporated she felt a familiar feeling of resentment rise up in her, and had to force herself to swallow it back down.

Sarah couldn't believe she was back here at ten o'clock at night, a full five hours after she had already been free for the day. She had forgotten to take home some dull paperwork that she had needed to fill out, and as she'd learned over the past ten months of working there, mistakes were not tolerated well by management, specifically by her overbearing supervisor Ronan. Ronan had wandering eyes and occasionally wandering hands, and he took every opportunity to attempt to intimidate Sarah by threatening to tell the higher-ups she wasn't working hard enough to keep up her end of their agreement. She was keen to avoid drawing more criticism to herself, so she'd reluctantly gotten back on the subway and ridden across town to get the paperwork from the darkened building and bring it home.

She keyed her employee code into the security panel beside the front door and entered the building. Since Fisk had been taken down by Daredevil, his mysterious replacement at the head of the company had installed several new security measures, including new codes and new cameras. Sarah carefully avoided looking as she walked by the front desk she usually manned during the day. As a general rule, she refused to think about her job—if you could call it that—when she wasn't at work, and right now she technically wasn't on the clock.

She briefly considered taking the stairs—the paperwork she needed was in the conference room on the third floor—but the clientele that frequented the building had an unfortunate habit of smoking in the stairwells, leaving them smelling like cigarettes and body odor, so she opted for the elevator instead. As the elevator rose, Sarah thought she could hear muffled noises coming from above her. The sounds got louder as she got closer to the third floor, and as the lift came to a stop she could clearly hear shouting and crashing from the other side of the doors.

The elevator doors slid open, and the first thing Sarah saw was a six-foot-four Russian flying towards her. She jumped to the side as the man crashed into the open elevator, crumpling into a heap on the threshold. Behind him, chaos raged.

Ronan and four men that Sarah loosely recognized as other employees were in various stages of fighting—and apparently losing to—a masked man dressed in black. Sarah's eyes widened as she recognized the subject of every Hell's Kitchen news outlet for the past few months: Daredevil.

The vigilante was struggling with three of the men, while a bleeding Ronan leaned against the wall, gasping for breath and clutching his right arm, which appeared to be broken. Another man appeared to already be unconscious, sprawled out on the floor near the conference table. In the middle of the room, Daredevil moved impressively fast, thrashing one of the men while effectively blocking the other two.

Sarah slammed her hand onto the down button, intending to get out of the fray, but the man whom she assumed Daredevil had thrown her way was blocking the doors from closing. He didn't wake as the doors bumped persistently against his side.

"Shit. Shit, shit, shit."

She bent down to try to heave his giant form out of the way, but within a few seconds of trying she could tell he was far too heavy. Suddenly she heard a gunshot and the water cooler that sat a mere few feet from the elevator door exploded, flooding the floor with water and broken glass. Snapping her head up, she saw Ronan—stupid, asshole Ronan—firing a handgun. He was apparently aiming at the vigilante, but with his dominant arm clearly broken he was forced to fire with his left hand, and the bullets were going everywhere.

Scrambling over the colossal Russian—who, shockingly, appeared to be stirring—Sarah ducked low and ran along the wall closest to her, keeping away from the raging fight and hopefully the flying bullets. Something smashed into the wall close above her head and she screamed. The vigilante's head snapped in her direction, and in his moment of distraction one of the men slashed his face with what looked like a shard of glass. Daredevil hissed in pain and slammed his fist into the man's face, focused once more on the fight.

The stairwell was on the other side of the fray; there was no way she'd make it over there in one piece. Instead, Sarah dipped into the first open room she came to: a small, darkened office. She scanned the room, looking for a place to hide. Unfortunately, her best bet seemed to be underneath the desk in the far corner—an obvious hiding place, but it would conceal her at least. Crawling into the small space, she fumbled in her purse for her stun gun. She wasn't sure who she was more scared of: the vigilante that was currently taking on four fully grown men (having already taken out two more), or the idiot with the gun and no aim. A stun gun probably wouldn't do much good against either of them, but it was better than nothing, she supposed.

She listened as the fight continued. The gunshots ceased suddenly and she heard Ronan shout in pain. The loud blows and various grunts continued for several minutes, and she could hear the men drop one by one. Finally, there was silence except for one man groaning lowly in pain. She could hear Daredevil speaking to him quietly, and strained her ears to hear what he was saying.

"Who took over for Fisk?"

The man mumbled something. She couldn't make it out completely, but it sounded vulgar. There was a loud snapping sound, and he screeched in pain. It sounded like the vigilante was breaking the man's fingers. Sarah winced.

"I'll ask again. Who took over for Fisk?"

"I don't know."

Another snap, followed by another scream.

"I don't know! I don't know! They don't tell me! They don't tell anyone everything. We all just get little pieces of the puzzle."

The vigilante growled in frustration.

"There's a list of employees at this company. Where is it?"

"On—on a flash drive. In the cabinet. Over there. But it won't help you. No one knows nothing."

There was a silence, and then a dull thud as she assumed Daredevil knocked the man out. She heard him moving around the other room, presumably to find whatever list the now unconscious man had mentioned. Sarah held her breath, hoping he would go down the staircase and away from her, but she had no such luck.

Daredevil limped slowly into the office, and then stopped. Sarah could see him through a small opening between the top of the desk and the side. He was standing in the middle of the room with his head down, his shoulders heaving as he breathed heavily. The moonlight through the window illuminated the uncovered lower half of his face, and Sarah could see a gash on his face. It was long and shaped like a check mark, going down along his jaw and then running up over his bottom lip. Blood dripped from the cut as he stood there, not moving. What was he doing?

Then he turned his head in her direction, and Sarah's stomach flipped. She couldn't see his eyes through the mask, but it looked like he was staring right at her hiding place.  _Don't come looking for me, please don't come looking for me._

She gripped her stun gun tighter, trying to breathe as quietly as possible. She had no way of knowing, of course, that he could hear her rocketing heartbeat clear as day, that the scent of her shampoo and perfume were like a beacon, telling him exactly where she was hiding. That he could sense the electric current in the stun gun she had in her hand, and feel the vibrations in the air from her slight trembling. That he could also tell she wasn't injured, hadn't been hit by the bullets or the debris.

After what seemed like a century of him seemingly staring directly at her, he limped over to the window, slid it open, and heaved himself out. Sarah breathed a sigh of relief; either he hadn't known she was there, or he thought she wasn't worth the effort. She heard police sirens approaching; the gunshots must have attracted attention. Crawling out from under the desk, she wondered briefly how Daredevil could survive casually jumping out of a third story window.

She wasn't sure if the vigilante would have hurt her or not; she worked for the worst people in Hell's Kitchen, but rumors seemed divided on how much violence he generally inflicted to get to what he wanted. Regardless, she was relieved to never have to see him again.

Unfortunately, that sense of relief would only last for the eighteen hours it took her to run into him again.

* * *

The next day, news of the vigilante's attack had spread around the company. Sarah spent most of the day fielding phone calls and making appointments for many more clients than usual, all of whom were anxious to come in and make sure their status in the criminal hierarchy of Hell's Kitchen was still secure. By the end of the day, her head was pounding from having to deal with so many of the city's lowest criminals. She counted down the minutes until she could leave, comforting herself with the thought that at least it was Tuesday, and she had her weekly dinner with her father tonight.

The clock finally reached the magic hour, and she swung her purse over her shoulder and made her way over to Ronan's office to settle the day's finances. His beady eyes were already watching her as she entered his office. Wordlessly she handed him her time sheet, and he stared at her for an extra beat before turning his gaze to the paper.

"Alright, that's ten hours for today, minus half an hour for lunch and another ten minutes for goofing off at the end of your shift packing up your things."

Sarah bristled but didn't say anything; there was no point in arguing for something as small as ten minutes. He looked disappointed that he didn't get a rise out of her.

"So that brings you to nine hours and twenty minutes. That's four hours and thirty five minutes for your paycheck, and the other half for daddy dearest's debt." He smiled at her mockingly. "At this rate you'll be done working this off in less than ten years."

The subway ride to her apartment was long and tiring, as it always felt after a long day of forcing smiles for horrible people. Sarah had time to take a quick shower and change clothes, and then it was time to catch a cab over to her father's place. She made a mental note that she needed to stop at the pharmacy for his medication on the way over, and that she needed to call and set up his usual doctor appointments for the upcoming month.

As she exited the building she heard someone calling her name. Turning, she saw her neighbor, an elderly woman named Mrs. Benedict, walking towards her. She was accompanied by a handsome man in a suit. He wore dark, round sunglasses and swept the trademark white cane of the blind in front of him as he walked, limping slightly.

"Sarah! Are you headed out towards your father's place? I need to go that way to get some groceries, do you feel like sharing a cab with an old woman?"

"I don't know if you're allowed to call yourself old yet, Mrs. Benedict," Sarah replied doubtfully. "I saw you chase that kid down the street the other day for trying to steal your purse. And then you started beating him with it."

Mrs. Benedict cackled. "That dumb lout didn't know what hit him."

Sarah laughed, then leaned in to the front window of the cab to give the address to the driver while Mrs. Benedict said goodbye to the blind man accompanying her. Sarah faced them again just as the man turned to walk away, and for the first time she got a good look at the left side of his face. Specifically, a very recent looking gash, running along his jaw and up onto his bottom lip. In the shape of a check mark. Sarah froze.

There was no way it was possible. But he had the same exact cut in the same place, the same limp in the same leg. She felt like the breath had been knocked out of her. There was no denying that the man standing in front of her was the same one who had torn his way through the office the night before.

He seemed not to notice her reaction, although she could have sworn she saw him pause for just a second and tilt his head slightly in her direction before continuing on his way.

"Are you getting in or getting out, kid?" she heard Mrs. Benedict say from inside the taxi, although she sounded much farther away. Sarah ducked into the vehicle, still in shock, and turned to her neighbor as they pulled away.

"Mrs. Benedict, who was that?"

"Oh, that's Matthew Murdock. He's a very sweet lawyer, he's helping me with all that trouble I've been having with those dumbasses at the department store. Why do you ask? He's very attractive young man, isn't he?" Mrs. Benedict asked knowingly.

"Um, yeah. Definitely," she said distractedly, not paying much attention to the older woman's usual attempts to set her up with any man that could walk and breathe. "That was a pretty nasty cut on his face, though. Did he...mention how he got it?" Sarah asked with forced casualness.

"Yes, poor thing. He said he tried taking the subway and stumbled getting out of the door. You know, they should really make those things safer. Just the other day my friend Georgia—you remember Georgia of course—was trying to get to…"

Sarah tuned Mrs. Benedict's ramblings out as her mind raced with this new information. Lost in her thoughts, she felt the older woman press something into her hand and glanced down; it was a business card. It bore the words  _'Nelson and Murdock: Attorneys at Law'_  followed by a phone number with a local Hell's Kitchen area code.

"He's very smart, you know, and funny too. I think you'd like him. And it's been so long since you've been out with anyone. He came all this way just to take my statements since I couldn't make it to his office. I had no idea when we spoke on the phone that he's… _blind_." Mrs. Benedict whispered the last part in the way that older people always whisper anything unpleasant, as though his blindness was a secret that Sarah and the rest of the world couldn't see as plain as day.

No, his blindness was obvious for all to see. His nighttime activities, on the other hand…Sarah felt a cold stone of trepidation drop into her stomach. She was pretty sure not many people knew about that part.

* * *

As Sarah and Mrs. Benedict rode away in the back of the taxi, they were unaware that the subject of their conversation could still hear every word they were saying from where he stood on the sidewalk with his ear cocked towards the departing vehicle.

He had vaguely recognized Sarah's scent—honeysuckle scented shampoo, with some sort of citrus soap—but hadn't been able to place it until he heard the woman's heartbeat take off when she saw his injured face. It was then that he realized where he knew her from, and cursed silently as he realized that she had recognized him too. Her shaken questions to Mrs. Benedict in the taxi only reinforced that theory.

Clutching his cane and trying to tamp down on the rising panic in his chest, Matt pulled out his cell phone to call Foggy.

* * *

A few hours later, after she was done visiting her father, Sarah found herself hesitating before opening her apartment door, and berating herself for it. But she couldn't help imagining Daredevil—or rather, Matthew Murdock—hiding in the shadows of her home, waiting to take out the only witness to his identity. For months she had heard the men at work speaking in hushed tones about this man and how dangerous he was. Sarah had no sympathy for most of the men that he put in the hospital—she had seen and heard how cruel they themselves were—but she still cringed at some of the tales of his violence. Snapped arms, broken legs, concussions, extreme blood loss, even a few comas. Several men had ended up in the hospital, using tubes to breathe and eat. The whispered accounts varied on whether or not he had decapitated Anatoly Ranskahov, but the general consensus was that no one would put it past him.

Sarah knew the vigilante had done a lot of good for the city—rescuing children, saving women, generally doing a lot to fight the bad guys. But no matter how reluctantly she had entered into it, she technically worked for those bad guys, and if he were to find out what she knew, she had no idea if he'd see much difference between her and the hired guns that he hospitalized on a regular basis.

But there was no way, she reassured herself. He was a good fighter, but he was still  _blind_ ; he couldn't possibly know that she had been in the office that night, or that she had passed by him again outside of her building. And he hadn't acknowledged her as she got into her cab. There was no connection for him to make between her and his activities the night before.

Sarah nodded reassuringly to herself, unlocking her door and entering the apartment. She would be too embarrassed to ever admit that she did a quick sweep of her home—under beds, behind the shower curtain—to make sure she was alone before discarding her purse on the table and perching on her computer chair. She opened her laptop, nervously biting her the thumb nail and staring at the business card in her hand. Matt Murdock. That was the masked vigilante's name. Before she could talk herself out of it, she brought Google up on her browser and typed the name in. A surprising number of search results came back, most of which were digital copies of newspaper articles dated about twenty years earlier.

_"Boy Blinded When Toxic Truck Overturns in Hell's Kitchen"_

_"Child Saves Man From Truck Crash, Loses Sight"_

_"Chemical Company Being Investigated For Tragic Chemical Spill"_

The articles were numerous, but repetitive. The young boy had pushed an old man out of the way of an oncoming truck, but the crash and the resulting chemical spill had blinded him. Down below the articles about the chemical spill, she saw his name mentioned in more links about his father, and clicked on a few. Again, they appeared to be physical newspaper copies scanned online.

_"Battlin' Jack Murdock Found Dead in Hell's Kitchen Alleyway"_

_"Hell's Kitchen Boxer Slain"_

_"Murder at Fogwell's Gym: Murdock Down For the Count **"**_

An obituary for Jack Murdock from a local Catholic church listed Matthew Murdock as Jack's only child, and made no mention of Matthew's mother or any other possible family. The remaining links were less depressing: An archived Columbia Law web page from several years ago listing students who were graduating Summa Cum Laude. A few archived law papers of his on the same website.

One naïve soul named Chris who hadn't yet made his Facebook page private (was this not 2015?) had posted a picture of Matthew several years back. The slightly younger looking Matt in the picture was in a bar, and had his arm slung around the shoulders of a blond, shaggy haired man. Both were holding beers and grinning widely. She scanned the caption: _"Matthew Murdock and Foggy Nelson, everybody! Graduating and leaving the rest of us to wallow in textbooks and law exams!"_

Sarah noted that the Foggy Nelson in the picture must be the 'Franklin Nelson' accompanying Matthew's name on the business card. Neither of them were tagged, and a quick Facebook search didn't come up with pages for either of them.

That was it. Nothing at all to link Matthew Murdock to Daredevil. Except for the accident that had blinded him. She had assumed that the bandana Daredevil wore over the top half of his face was opaque enough to conceal his identity but thin enough that he could see through it. But now she realized he didn't need eyeholes or sheer material—it wouldn't make any difference if he couldn't see anyway. She recalled how he had moved during the scuffle in Orion: quickly and gracefully but also brutally, connecting his fists and feet to his opponents with alarming accuracy and no mercy. How could a blind man possibly fight like that?

But there was no doubt in her mind. Especially now, staring at the Facebook picture on the screen, she could see that the shape of his jaw and mouth were undeniably the same-although he looked different with the wide, charming smile he wore in the photo. There was no way it wasn't him. Even if it made no sense.

* * *

"I don't want to interrogate a girl, Foggy. Especially not one who's about half a foot shorter and seventy pounds lighter than me."

Matt and Foggy stood in the reception area of their office. If it could be called that. It had a desk, and at it there was usually a receptionist, although when Matt called Foggy to tell him what was happening, they had made sure to meet up after Karen had already gone home for the day.

"Seventy pounds? How much does all that martial arts muscle weigh, man?"

"Foggy."

"I know, I know. I don't want to see you running around terrorizing women either, especially since I'm sure if she's in anyway connected to your life she must be a hot one."

Matt sighed, ignoring Foggy's claim as usual.

Foggy continued, "But I mean, what other options do you have here, Matt? She works for the Big Bad Company that you're trying to fight. She's gotta know what kind of company that place is, and she still chooses to work there. And it's especially sketchy that she was lurking around the place in the middle of the night. This chick doesn't sound like the most trustworthy person to know your secret. If she tells even one of those guys about who you really are—"

"—I know, Foggy." Matt felt sick at the thought of the criminals of Hell's Kitchen finding out his true identity, tracking down Foggy and Karen, probably Claire too, possibly even Father Lantom. "I'm not saying that I'm  _not_  going to interrogate her. I'm just saying…I'm not going to like it."

There was a pause.

"Do you usually like it?"

Matt didn't answer.

Picking up his cane, he turned towards the door. Night was falling, and he had to change into something a little more intimidating before tracking down the girl who knew too much.

* * *

Looking back on it later that night, Sarah would realize that her major mistake was procrastinating on taking her trash out.

She had woken up late that morning, having not slept well the night before for obvious reasons. After sleeping through her first alarm and then an additional twenty minutes past that, she got ready for work in a whirlwind, nearly skinning her pinky toe while trying to hurriedly jam her foot into her black work pumps and then having a near miss involving her morning coffee and her white blouse. She had no time to even put on mascara, much less take the trash out. Then, after her curbside encounter with Matt Murdock that evening, she had been too busy with her obsessive Googling to think of her increasingly ripe smelling trash until it was already dark out.

Now, in the dim blue light from her computer, Sarah leaned back in her chair and glanced around her apartment, giving her eyes a break from the screen. Her gaze fell upon her full trash can and she sighed, uncurling herself from her desk chair and stretching before walking over to the bin and drawing the bag from it. She could do with a normal, chore-like task anyway, to take her mind off of blind vigilantes and blackmailing crime lords. Once outside in the dark alley behind her apartment, Sarah made her way to the dumpster and threw the trash bag in.

It wasn't until he had already invaded her space that she realized she wasn't alone. A large hand covered her mouth while another one settled on her throat, and she stared, wide-eyed and panicked, into the partially covered face of Daredevil.


	2. Choices

_Chapter Two: Choices_

It wasn't until he had already invaded her space that she realized she wasn't alone. A large hand covered her mouth while another one settled on her throat, and she stared, wide-eyed and panicked, into the partially covered face of Daredevil.

He slowly backed her up until she felt her spine press against the brick of her building. His mouth, the only visible part of his face, was set into a grim line as he held her firmly in place.

"I'm going to take my hand off your mouth," he said in a low, even voice, "and it would be in your best interest not to scream. Do you understand?"

Sarah hesitated, then nodded. She realized belatedly that he wouldn't be able to see it, but he must have felt the movement of her head, because he lifted his hand and rested it semi-threateningly on the wall a few inches from her face, ready to quiet her again if needed. His other hand remained on her throat, exerting just the slightest pressure, so that she could feel her heartbeat pulsing wildly against it.

"I'm going to ask you some questions," he said, "If you answer truthfully, I won't hurt you. Believe me when I tell you that you don't want to lie, and that I  _will_  be able to tell the difference. Understood?" He paused, and Sarah nodded again before catching herself and answering verbally.

"I got it," she whispered.

"What's your name?"

"Sarah." She hoped he wouldn't demand a last name, and thankfully he didn't.

"You live in this building, Sarah?"

"Yes."

"And you work for Orion Incorporated?"

Sarah's eyes widened. So he did remember her from their first meeting. "...yes. But I'm…I'm just an secretary, I—I don't do anything important there."  _So please don't torture me for information_ , she added mentally.

He nodded slowly. "Alright, Sarah. Now we're going to talk about me. Do you know who I am?"

Sarah could feel her palms starting to sweat and she hoped she could play dumb long enough to get out of this.

"Y-you're...Daredevil."

"I think you know that's not what I'm asking." _So much for playing dumb._  "Do you know who I really am?"

"I—I, um—"

Sarah faltered, still not sure if telling the truth was her best option, despite his warning. What would he do once he confirmed that she knew his identity?

Her stuttering hesitation gave her away.

The vigilante pointedly increased his hold on her throat just slightly—not painful, but undeniably threatening—and growled quietly, "If you're thinking of lying, rethink it. Do you know who I am?"

"Yes."

The pressure on her throat lessened again, an immediate reward for a truthful answer. He didn't say anything for a long moment, and she wondered briefly if he would snap her neck here and now. Instead, he questioned her again in that same quietly intimidating tone.

"What's my name?"

"Matthew." She answered quickly this time. "Uh, M-Matthew Murdock."

His jaw twitched with displeasure at her accurate answer, but the pressure of his hand remained steady—not lessening, but not increasing either.

"And how long have you known who I am?"

"Not long."

"Be more specific."

"Just since earlier today. When I saw you outside."

He nodded once, seemingly satisfied with her timeline. "Tell me what else you know."

"Well, you're, um…blind?" Sarah cringed as she heard herself awkwardly whisper the last word of the sentence in much the same way Mrs. Benedict had done earlier. She thought she saw his mouth twitch into the ghost of a smirk for a second, but it returned to its grim line before she could be sure.

"What else?"

"Not much. Um, you're a lawyer. A defense lawyer."

His frown deepened. "Where?"

The tone of his voice had darkened, and suddenly Sarah couldn't stop thinking about the Russian man missing his head. She hadn't thought her heart could beat any faster, but there it went. Suddenly, volunteering the truth seemed like a foolish gamble.

"I d-don't know."

"You're lying," he said calmly. "Remember how we talked about how you don't want to do that?"

"I—it's Murdock and something. Or s-something and Murdock? I don't—I don't remember. Whatever the other lawyer's name is—Foggy something—"

Sarah realized immediately that she'd made a mistake in mentioning his law partner's name—or more specifically in using his nickname, which she had no reason to know. She felt Daredevil's hand tighten suddenly and reactively on her throat. Before, he had been carefully restrained: commanding and intimidating but not violent. But at the sound of his friend's name coming from her mouth, something inside him seemed to snap, and she found herself pinned harder against the wall, the harsh brick biting into her skin.

"Tell me what you know about Foggy. Who else knows about him?" His voice now had a rough, almost panicked edge to it.

Sarah couldn't draw enough breath to answer the questions he barked at her. Tiny black dots began to dance in her vision. She clawed at his powerful forearm with both hands, using all of her strength to try and loosen his grip, but it was like iron.

"Nothing—stop—" she choked out, "You said—if I—t-told the truth— _please_ —don't—"

He seemed to suddenly snap out of whatever state he had been in, releasing her abruptly and stepping back. He turned away from her, breathing heavily, and she registered briefly that he seemed almost taken aback by his own actions. Then the sudden rush of oxygen to her head coupled with a strange mixture of relief and panic brought her to the ground.

She slid down the wall, suddenly acutely aware of her heartbeat pounding in her head and how difficult breathing was, like her lungs would only expand halfway. Was breathing always this difficult? Every inhalation somehow made it worse, and her head spun as panic set in. Why was her heart beating so fast? Was she having a heart attack? She desperately tried to breathe in fully, but couldn't.

Daredevil crouched down in front of her and she shrank back against the brick wall, curling into herself. She tried to gasp out a few words— _stay away_ —but nothing came out. She couldn't focus on anything other than the lack of air available to her.

"Breathe."

She felt a strong hand splay against her chest, pushing her into an upright sitting position.

" _Breathe._ Sarah. You have to calm down. You're hyperventilating."

His voice sounded far away.

The black dots swam into view again, multiplying and blurring with the black mask of the man crouching in front of her, and then the dark, overbearing shadows of Hell's Kitchen enveloped her vision completely.

* * *

Foggy answered his phone after the first ring. He had clearly been waiting for Matt to call him with news.

"Hey. What's happening? Did you find her?"

"Yeah, I found her. I'm in her apartment with her now," Matt answered. More specifically, he was standing in her small kitchen with his mask crumpled on the counter next to him, while she was laid out on the couch about ten feet away.

"You're with her right now?" Foggy repeated, sounding confused. "And you…just thought you'd put me on speakerphone so I could cross-examine her, too?"

"No. She's unconscious."

"What?"

"She passed out in the alleyway. She was hyperventilating. I brought her back up to her place."

"She passed out?" Foggy repeated. "Jesus, Matt, what did you do to her?"

"What do you think I did, Foggy? I asked her what I need to know. Or I started to. Things…got a little out of control," Matt admitted.

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

"Did you hurt her?"

Matt felt a pang in his chest at the uncertainty in his friend's voice. Foggy clearly didn't know anymore what his best friend was capable of. Sometimes Matt wasn't sure either, but it hurt to hear the question come from Foggy.

"No. Not…not really." That was a lie. Choking someone, even for a few seconds, definitely counted as hurting them. But he didn't think he could admit that to Foggy. "I mean…nothing that's going to last. I think I scared her more than anything."

"Well…I guess that was the point, right? Did you find anything out? Has she ratted you out to the CEO of Evil yet?"

"I haven't gotten that far. But I know that she knows a lot more than I thought she did. That's why I'm calling." He paused. "She knows your name, Foggy. Not even just your legal name, your nickname, too. She knows we work together. She's been looking into us. I don't like that."

"Me either."

"I need you to stay somewhere else tonight. A hotel, maybe. Just until I find out if she's told anyone."

"A hotel? You might not have noticed, what with your failing eyesight, but I'm not made of money, Matt. I can't exactly afford vacations at the Plaza." Foggy voice was light and joking on the surface, but strained. Matt could hear fear underneath. Foggy wasn't used to the idea of there being bad people looking for him.

"I'm sorry, Foggy. Make sure you check in with cash. I'll call you when I know more."

"Alright, buddy. And hey…I know it's important for you to find out what this chick knows, but maybe try not to terrify her to the point of unconsciousness again, huh?"

"I'll try."

Matt ended the call and listened to his surroundings. It had been a little under ten minutes since Sarah had passed out in the alleyway. She was still unconscious, but her breathing and heartbeat were steady. Matt turned his attention towards her cabinets. The stacks in the sink indicated that she clearly hadn't done dishes for a few days, but she had a few clean glasses in the upper cupboard. He grabbed one at random and felt for the sink's tap, figuring that he could at least give her some water after scaring her into a panic attack.

He was divided about what had happened earlier; he knew he shouldn't have used such force on someone who clearly wasn't fighting back. But the mention of Foggy had scared him to the point of irrationality. He'd have to stay calmer if he wanted to find anything else out. He didn't want to frighten her to the point where she wouldn't be able to tell him anything.

Her breathing changed very slightly, and Matt knew she'd be waking up in just a few seconds. He picked up the glass of water he'd poured for her and then, after a moment's hesitation, the mask as well. He slid the black fabric down over the top half of his face. Obviously there was no point in hiding his identity, but he knew what effect the mask had on people. Maybe he didn't want to scare her as badly as he did before, but a little extra intimidation could go a long way.

* * *

As Sarah came to, she was surprised to see her own ceiling above her and not the walls of a dirty alleyway. For a moment, she allowed herself to sink into the comforting thought that she had dreamed the whole confrontation. That moment ended when she heard footsteps close by and tore her eyes away from the ceiling.

She was lying on her couch in her apartment. She sat up as quickly as she could manage with a swimming head, shakily supporting herself by her arms. As she moved to stand up she felt a heavy hand on her shoulder, pushing her firmly back onto the couch.

"Don't get up."

She whipped her head around to see Daredevil.  _Matt Murdock_ , she corrected herself mentally. Referring to him by his real name in her head—the name attached to the smiling man in the Facebook photo—made him seem at least a little more human and a little less like a…well, a devil.

Matt took his hand off her shoulder and walked around the side of the couch to set a glass of water on the side table next to her. His mask was still on. He reached over and grabbed a chair from her kitchen table, picking it up and setting it in front of the couch before sitting and facing her. He looked almost comically out of place in his mask and black combat outfit, surrounded by the bright, cheerful décor of her apartment. She wondered how he had known which one was hers.

"You had a panic attack. The water will help," he said.

Sarah didn't answer. She glanced nervously at the front door, wondering what she could do to somehow get those few seconds she'd need to reach it before he could leap from his tense position in his chair and stop her. A brief thought of smashing the glass of water over his head crossed her mind—

"You wouldn't make it past the coffee table," he said softly, as though he could read her thoughts.

She looked at him sharply.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said.

"What do you call what just happened?" she asked incredulously before she could stop herself. She kicked herself mentally for snapping at a man who, in the not too distant past, had pinned her to a wall by her throat.

He hesitated.

"I—lost control." He offered no more explanation. "But I have some more questions. I need you to answer them truthfully, and I promise I won't touch you. I won't come any closer than I am now. Okay?"

"Do I have any choice?" she asked quietly.

"Not really, no. But I didn't tie you up, as a show of good faith."

Sarah doubted the lack of restraints had anything to do with good faith. Rather it just seemed to enforce the fact that even with her hands and feet free, the only threat in the room was him.

"Tell me who you've told."

"I haven't," she answered immediately. "I-I haven't told a soul, I swear to God." Her heart beat faster as she desperately hoped he would believe her.

He tilted his head slightly to the side. There was a tense, lengthy silence. When he finally spoke again, his voice was quiet, carefully controlled, but with a barely contained tone of threat in it.

"The problem here, Sarah, is that you act the same when you're scared as when you're lying, and it's difficult to tell which it is. And this particular question is one that I really need you to answer truthfully. So think hard. Who have you told about me?"

"No one. I'm not lying, I swear."

Another silence.

"Who have you told about Foggy?"

" _No one,_ " she repeated forcefully. "I haven't told anyone anything about either of you, and I—I barely know anything about him anyway, just that he's your partner. That's it, nothing else. I haven't said a word."

"Who are you planning on telling?"

The question caught her off guard. She had been so preoccupied with learning everything she could about him, and then with not getting choked to death in an alleyway, that the idea of sharing what she had learned with anyone hadn't even crossed her mind.

"I—n-no one."

His jaw twitched at the catch in her voice; he clearly thought she was lying. Her mouth went dry at the dark expression on his face, and she reached for her water glass. He leaned forward so quickly she barely saw him move and seized her wrist before she could touch the glass. His long fingers easily encircled her thin wrist, and his grip was painfully tight. He made no more movement towards her, but the threat was clear.

"I don't think you're telling me the truth anymore, Sarah," he said softly.

"No, I am, I am," she stuttered desperately. "I just, I hadn't really th-thought about it. But I'm not going to tell anyone, I swear I'm not. Please, I'm not lying to you. " Her words came out in a jumble, her voice cracking slightly with fear.

He held her wrist a moment longer, and then released it, but he remained leaning forward in his chair. She leaned back against the back of the couch, anxious to put more space between them.

"Alright. Let's say I believe you," he said, and she felt a rush of relief. "I think that right now you truly mean it when you say you won't tell anyone, but unfortunately your current career makes me think you might change your mind."

Sarah swallowed. "I'm just a secretary—"

"Are you, though? What kind of secretary shows up for work in the middle of the night?"

Sarah was silent for a moment. "I forgot some paperwork."

"So you're just a secretary, but you're in charge of paperwork that's important enough to warrant going all the way across town to retrieve it at ten o'clock at night?" There was an unmistakable note of skepticism to his voice.

Sarah didn't respond.

"I know that you're aware of what kind of company you work for. You know perfectly well who the employees and clients who come and go from that place are; what they do to people. Or are you blind, too?" he asked sarcastically.

"Of course I know what they do," she snapped. His mocking insinuation that she was willfully ignoring the things that happened at that company hit too close to home. He didn't know anything about her. "I'm not an idiot. I have to see them every day. I have to shred their documents and set their meetings. I hate them just as much as you do. I'm not about to tell them anything."

"That's not really a risk I can take," he said harshly.

Sarah suddenly felt exhausted. Maybe it was the adrenaline from the past hour leaving her, or maybe it was from the panic attack. Maybe it was from the hopelessness that slowly ebbed into her mind, the lack of any possible scenario in which this night could turn out well for her. But suddenly she was so tired she could barely muster the energy to speak.

"So…what…what does that mean? What happens now?"

"First and foremost it means that I need to minimize the chance of you deciding to mention this to your bosses. Quit your job."

"What?"

"Quit your job. Find a new one in a different city. Never go back," he commanded. He clearly expected her to obey, so her stomach flipped with dread as she responded with the opposite.

"I can't do that."

He cocked his head. "I wasn't asking."

"I don't care," she said, a note of hysteria making her voice go up an octave. " _I can't leave._  You don't understand."

She expected him to get angrier, to threaten her or put his hands on her. Instead, he sat still for a moment, listening to her fast breathing with an unreadable look on his face.

"Then explain it to me."

Sarah faltered. She couldn't tell him about her situation. Not with her father being in the condition he was in. Bringing him to the attention of yet another dangerous person in Hell's Kitchen wasn't an option.

"I just…if I even mentioned leaving, they'd—" her voice wavered and she paused to gather herself before repeating forcefully, "I can't quit."

"Why not? You said yourself you have no loyalty to them. Why stay? Because they'll hurt you? They'll hurt someone else?"

Her father's face flashed into her mind and she tried not to show how it twisted her insides with worry, but she knew by the way he tilted his head back that he had somehow caught onto it anyway. She knew the man was blind, but somehow he could still read her, and it made her feel horribly exposed.

"Who will they hurt? What are they holding over your head, Sarah?"

To Sarah's horror, she felt tears beginning to prick behind her eyes. She had never been the type who was quick to tear up, but her father's safety had been the center of her whole life for almost a year now, the one thing holding everything together, and the thought of him dying hit her heart like a train every time it came up. She took a few deep breaths and focused on not letting any tears form. She would not cry in front of the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. Have a panic attack and pass out, sure. But she would not cry, and she definitely wouldn't put her father in any more danger.

Matt was still waiting for her answer. She didn't know if he could tell that she was close to crying, but if he could he didn't acknowledge it.

"Please. I can't tell you. And I can't quit. So if you're going to hurt me…just do it," she whispered.

He was silent for a long time. Sarah kept her eyes trained on him, watching for signs that he was going to fly off the handle and start breaking her fingers. She was surprised when instead he slowly sat back in his chair and inhaled deeply.

"Alright. Let's say you don't tell your bosses who I am. What's stopping you from going to the police?"

Sarah thought back to her last interaction with the police of Hell's Kitchen, almost a year ago now.

She had gone to the police station almost immediately after meeting James Wesley for the first time, after he had first made her the 'offer'—if it could be called that—to step in and take over her father's debt to Wilson Fisk. He had revealed to her that he knew of her father's condition, that conveniently one of their companies had an administrative opening, and that this arrangement would be best for everyone involved. Then, with a cold imitation of a smile, he had gone.

Less than half an hour later she had found her way to the police station. The officer at the front desk had seemed friendly, smiling at her when she entered the room. But when she had desperately explained to him that she was being blackmailed and threatened by these men, the smile had slowly dropped from his face, and he had glanced around apprehensively before leaning forward to speak to her as quietly as possible.

_"You seem like a good enough kid, so I'm going to give you some advice. Take the job, and keep your mouth shut. Trying to go to the police to fight these guys…it's never going to work. Trust me. I'm not going to rat you out for coming here tonight. Not this time. But if you come back here again, I can't guarantee that another officer won't. Got it?"_

Sarah had been at a loss for words as the officer calmly went back to his paperwork, deliberately acting as though she was no longer there.

Lost in that bitter memory, Sarah jumped as she heard Matt speak again.

"Sarah. I asked you a question."

Sarah snapped back to the situation at hand, and the question in front of her.

"I guess I trust them even less than I trust you," she said hollowly. It was true. Even after Fisk's well-publicized arrest had led to a sweep of most of the crooked cops in Hell's Kitchen, there was no way of knowing how many they had missed, or how many had turned since then. "Besides, I've seen the videos of you fighting those cops. They've never managed to catch you. I don't know that I'd trust them to find you before you found me."

His face was again unreadable beneath the mask as he appeared to think about her answers.

Sarah stared distractedly at the glass of water on the side table. The glass he'd brought her was a party favor she'd gotten at her best friend Lauren's bachelorette party two years earlier. Sarah had picked the glasses, actually, when she was planning the party. She wondered if the vigilante realized that the glass he'd blindly picked from her cabinet had sparkly phallic symbols all over it. Why had she even kept that glass? The happy, vibrant girl who had planned that party didn't exist anymore, replaced by someone whose life was out of control. Looking at the glass and its stupid, glittery penis drawings, she felt a bright spark of anger inside of her, and that anger slowly replaced the exhaustion in her system. She was sick of this new life, so different from her old one. She hadn't chosen this.

She didn't choose for her father to get sick. The decision to take on his debt hadn't been a choice, not really. Not considering the only other option. Working as a secretary with a sadistic supervisor wasn't her first pick for a new career, either. Even discovering Daredevil's identity hadn't been something she chose, something she went looking for. Things just kept  _happening_  to her, and she couldn't remember the last time that anything in her life was the result of her own decisions. Sarah's head was spinning with anger, fear, and exhaustion as she thought about it. All of her choices lately were being made by others, never by herself.

But maybe they didn't have to be.

Looking at the man in the mask sitting across from her, she made a decision. Maybe a bad one, she wasn't sure, but at the moment she didn't care.

"I-I can't quit my job. It won't help either of us. But if I stay there…I think maybe we can help each other."

Matt leaned forward, and this time she resisted the urge to shrink away.

"I'm listening."


	3. A Deal With the Devil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! I'm so glad you guys are enjoying the story! I'm working really hard to keep Sarah as realistic as I can, and Matt too. As you'll soon see, they are still not super friendly, and it's a fun challenge to write two characters that I personally like, but who as of right now don't particularly like each other, haha. Let me know what you think!

### Chapter Three: A Deal with the Devil

Sarah tucked a few strands of dark hair behind her ear with a shaking hand and took a deep breath before she began speaking.

"I could, uh…I could hear you in the next room. When you were at the office last night."

He nodded. "You were hiding under a desk."

Sarah squinted at him. His face was serious but she had the unsettling feeling that he was mocking her.

"Right," she said reluctantly. "Well, I overheard what you were asking that guy when you were, um…" she trailed off uncomfortably. _Snapping his fingers like glow sticks._

Matt looked away. No, she had to remind herself. He didn't look anywhere. He just turned his masked face away from her. She thought was interesting how he still went through the motions of someone who didn't want to meet her eyes, even though he couldn't see them.

"Questioning him," he quietly finished for her. Not exactly the phrase she would have picked. He turned his head back to her. "What about it? I don't suppose you know the answers?"

"No," She answered quickly. She definitely did not want to give him the impression that she knew things and was keeping them from him. "But the thing is…he was right. No one at the company is in the know about what's going on. Torturing employees and clients for information, it—it's not going to do anything but put whoever is in charge now even more on guard."

She saw Matt grit his teeth, but he didn't argue.

"What's your point?"

"I think maybe I could help you find the information you're looking for. Without making them suspicious."

He smirked. "I thought you were just a secretary?"

"I am. That's kind of the point. No one's looking at me."

He didn't say anything, which Sarah took as a sign that he was considering it, so she continued.

"The other employees, and the clients…they talk in front of me like I'm not even there. And usually I—I try not to listen. I don't want to know what kind of things they're…" she trailed off, not wanting to get into the dicey dealings of her coworkers. "But I can start listening. And—and I deal with tons of paperwork every day. A lot of it's stuff that I'm supposed to shred. I'm not really sure what all would be helpful, but there has to be something?"

"And you think you can get that information to me without anyone noticing?" he asked doubtfully.

Sarah thought of the employees that passed by her desk every day with only a cursory leer or dismissive glance, if they looked at her at all. Clients were the same. Half the time they didn't acknowledge her even while they were making an appointment with her. She generally considered their indifference to her a small blessing.

On the other hand, Ronan and his sneering, excessively close attention to her daily activities popped into her mind, and she felt a flicker of doubt. But she couldn't back out just because of her sleazy supervisor.

"Yeah. I think I can. I'd be willing to try."

"You do realize this is dangerous, right? If they catch you doing anything to hurt the company, they're probably not going to suspend you with pay," he said harshly.

He was right. For every rumor Sarah had heard about Daredevil and the violence he inflicted, she could think of just as many rumors about her employers that were equally terrifying. And those ones she knew were true.

"Yeah, I get that," she said. "I'm—I'm telling you that I'll do it anyway."

He nodded, but he was still frowning doubtfully.

"I'm going to guess you aren't doing all of this out of the goodness of your heart," he said. "You want something in exchange."

_Not killing me would be nice,_ she thought, but decided against putting that idea into his head.

"Take them down." Her voice sounded shaky, and she took a deep breath to steady it. When she spoke again, she was surprised at how forceful she sounded. "The whole company. Make it so they can't just switch names and pass the reins to a new leader again. I want out, for good, and the only way I can do that is if you tear the whole place down. Past the point of rebuilding."

After a few moments, his mouth quirked up into a hard smile, almost more of a grimace.

"That, I can do," he answered. The hard edge to his voice sent a shiver down her spine, and she had no doubt that he meant what he said.

"Okay," she said. "Then…it's a deal?" Her voice involuntarily turned upwards at the end of her sentence, making it sound like a question.

A tense silence stretched between them.

"Deal."

Matt stood up suddenly, and Sarah flinched. He circled around the couch she was sitting on and she apprehensively craned her neck around to keep him in her line of vision. He strode over to her kitchen counter, where he picked up a flip phone she didn't recognize. She was dying to know how he moved around like that, how he knew where things were. Maybe he wasn't really blind? It seemed unlikely. But, then again, a blind guy being able to fight like he did seemed unlikely, too. The curiosity was almost unbearable, but she didn't dare ask.

He crossed back into the living room and held the phone out to her. She took it, wincing when she saw how badly her hand was shaking. She hoped he didn't notice.

"Program your number into the speed dial," he ordered.

Sarah looked down at the phone warily. She opened the contacts list and noted that there were only two numbers saved in there. Neither one had a name next to it, and she wondered how he knew which one was calling him. Maybe no one called him. He didn't seem like the chatty type. Maybe he only called other people. _Probably to threaten them,_ she thought resentfully.

Her fingers paused as she got to the last two digits of her number, and she briefly considered putting in fake ones. By the time he tried to get in touch with her and realized it was fake, maybe she could have figured out another solution, found someplace safe for her and her father to hide…

She glanced up at Matt, who was still standing over her, waiting silently. He didn't seem to notice that she had paused. No. There was no way she'd be able to hide from both the company and the vigilante, and take care of her father on top of that. Reluctantly, she keyed in the last two digits of her real number.

She flipped the phone closed and held it out to Matt, but he shook his head.

"Go get yours."

Sarah stood slowly, not sure where he was going with this.

"It's, um…it's in my bedroom," she said hesitantly. He jerked his head toward her bedroom door, which she took as the go-ahead to go get it. When she got to the doorway, she heard him speak behind her.

"I'll trust that you're smart enough not to grab anything else while you're in there. That includes the stun gun in your top drawer."

Sarah bit her lip. It really was freaky how he knew that. Maybe he had searched her apartment while she was passed out and found the stun gun. Somehow, she doubted that was it. She quickly grabbed her phone off the charger on her nightstand and returned to the living room, now carrying a cell phone in each hand.

"Use mine to call your own."

Sarah wasn't thrilled about this speaking-only-in-commands routine he was doing, but it was better than his previous speaking-only-in-threats tendency, so she did as she was told. She hit the third speed dial, then the call button on his burner phone, and within a few seconds hers lit up and started ringing.

"Just making sure you didn't accidentally put in the wrong number," he said in a deceptively light tone. _Oh._ So he had noticed her hesitation while putting her number in. Of course he had. What didn't this blind guy see?

"Right," she said uneasily. "So…if I find something, I should call you?" The idea of calling up the vigilante on the phone was strange to her.

"If you want. But I'll be stopping by often enough that you should be able to tell me what you've found in person."

Sarah raised her eyebrows. "Stopping by like…um…the unannounced kind of stopping by?"

"Probably."

"Don't you have criminals to be catching?" she asked nervously. "Or, laws to, like…litigate, or something? Do you really have time to be popping up here unexpectedly?"

He snorted. "I'll make time. You know my identity. You know who my friends are. Do you really think I'm just going to take it on faith that you'll keep as tight-lipped as you're promising, Sarah?"

Sarah sighed. She wasn't sure what she had expected. "That's great," she muttered under her breath.

Matt held his hand out expectantly for his phone and Sarah reached out to give it to him. She was surprised when instead of taking the phone, he moved lightning fast and grabbed her wrist, yanking it so that she stumbled closer to him.

His grip was very loose, not the vice-like grasp he had used earlier, but the sudden proximity was threatening enough to make up for it. She was now only inches away from him, and if he hadn't had a mask covering his eyes she would have had to tilt her head far back to meet them. He held her wrist against his chest, preventing her from leaning away. She stood frozen, her heart racing as he bowed his head slightly until his mouth was directly next to her ear.

"Just to be clear, this agreement doesn't mean that I trust you," he said softly, but his undertone was unmistakably menacing. She could feel his hot breath on her skin. "If this is a trick, if it ends up backfiring on me, and especially if it pulls in Foggy or anyone else in my life…you will be the first person I come looking for. And you will not be happy when I find you. Do you understand me?"

Sarah breathing quickened and she avoided looking up at the man towering over her. She nodded hard.

"Y-yes. I understand."

His hand slipped over her wrist and took the burner phone out of her palm. Pocketing it, he brushed past her.

"I'll be checking in soon," she heard him say from behind her. Then the sound of a window opening, and she turned around just in time to see him catapult himself off of her fire escape.

Shakily, she sank down onto her couch.

It was difficult to process all of the things that had just happened. Was it possible that it was only the night before that she had reluctantly returned to Orion for that paperwork? The twenty four hours following could only be called a flood of crazy. She had witnessed a bullet-sprayed brawl. Hidden under a desk and prayed for her life. Discovered a vigilante's secret identity. Been threatened in an alleyway. Had a panic attack. Been threatened in her living room. Made a deal with a dangerous man to spy on other dangerous men. Then been threatened a bit more.

And now she was finally alone, but with the lingering warning that the masked vigilante could be lurking nearby at any time.

Sarah grabbed the glass of water on the side table and quickly drained it. As she set the glass down she decided maybe she could use something a bit stronger. She made her way into the kitchen and found the cheap bottle of red wine she had stashed on top of her fridge. She popped the cork and grabbed a wine glass from the cupboard.

As she took her first sip, Sarah wondered if anyone had ever had anything good come from making a deal with the devil.

~*~

Unbeknownst to Sarah, Matt was still lingering in the alleyway below, listening closely to the apartment he had just vacated.

He waited tensely, needing to make sure that she didn't immediately get on the phone and call her boss or the police. Despite her promises that she wouldn't tell anyone, and the steady, truthful heartbeat underlying her words, Matt was still nervous. No, not nervous. Completely panicked and barely keeping it under control.

He was reluctant to admit that despite his every attempt to make it seem otherwise, she still completely had the upper hand in their partnership, even if she didn't seem to realize it. The threat of violence was the only leverage he had, while she had the ability to ruin his life and everything he had worked so hard for.

If she changed her mind for even a second, she could destroy everything. The police could show up at his doorstep. Criminals of any sort could show up at Foggy's or Karen's. The thought made his stomach churn. He tried to reassure himself that she had been telling the truth when she had sworn to keep his secret, but her motivations for doing so still weren't entirely clear, and it made him uneasy. She didn't seem to be malicious, but he didn't know her well enough to be sure.

Matt had been surprised when she refused his command for her to quit her job, especially given how clearly terrified of him she was. He was even more surprised when she had offered to spy for him. For her to be willing to work with someone she obviously feared and distrusted…he didn't know what leverage what Orion had, what blackmail or threat they were using to keep her employed, but it had to be something bad, because she clearly hated working there if she viewed working with him as the better alternative.

He heard her move into her kitchen and open something. Concentrating, he inhaled. Red wine. Evidently she needed a drink after their encounter. He felt a small pang of guilt, but dismissed it.

There were times when Matt enjoyed threatening people. He could admit that to himself now. Something about the act made the devil inside him snarl and snap with approval. But intimidating an already frightened woman was the opposite of enjoyable. It made him feel like he was taking another step closer to the darkness he constantly circled.

Sarah represented a very real threat to him, that was true. But it wasn't a physical one, and he wasn't enthusiastic about exerting so much power over someone who was clearly nowhere close to matching him. He had been careful not to actually hurt her after she woke up. Hearing her heartbeat race in fear every time he got close to her was unsettling for him, but as much as he didn't enjoy threatening her, he also couldn't trust her. Not with the lives of those he cared about.

The whole night he had kept Foggy and Karen's faces—or rather, the fiery, wispy approximation of their faces that he had to work with—firmly in his mind. The protective anger they evoked had made it easier for him to put his reservations aside and easily intimidate the thin girl even as he agreed to work with her.

He listened closely again, wincing as he heard her pour a second glass of wine. She padded into her room and he heard the springs in her mattress as she laid down. He focused on the electric pulse her phone emitted. She had taken it into the bedroom with her, but she wasn't using it.

He waited a few minutes longer, but the scene remained the same. Reassured that for tonight, at least, it didn't look like she was going to expose his secret, Matt headed towards home.

~*~

The next morning, Sarah's head pounded as her alarm went off. She fumbled to hit snooze on her phone's screen before the piercing ringtone could literally crack her skull open. A gnawing dread sat heavy in her stomach. It was a familiar feeling; she had occasionally gotten it in college on the mornings after she and her roommates had gone a little overboard at parties. Her hungover mind would be a few moments too slow to remember her embarrassing actions from the night before, but her gut wouldn't. Those first few moments after waking up were always awful, full of anxiety but with no idea why until her mind caught up. This particular morning, when the memory of the previous day finally came to her, it hit her especially hard.

_Shit._ This was way worse than in college. Back then, she'd wake up and wince as she remembered that she had vomited in the bushes behind Jimmy Caudill's house during a Halloween party, or that she and her friends had tipsily sang off-key ABBA songs for karaoke night in a bar that—as she would later be informed—some of her professors frequented. This time the memory was her making a deal with the Devil of Hell's Kitchen to risk her safety trying to bring down an incredibly powerful and dangerous company. Definitely an all new category of shitty recollections to wake up to. To make matters worse, the decisions she had made last night hadn't even been hindered by alcohol; just her own desperation and possibly insanity.

Sarah groaned as she sat up. Maybe soothing last night's shock with a few glasses of wine hadn't been a great idea. She glanced at the clock and debated whether she wanted to shower before work or take those extra twenty minutes to sleep in. Figuring that twenty minutes probably wouldn't help as much as soap and hot water, she clambered out of bed. She stumbled to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of Gatorade from her fridge, chugging it as she made her way to the bathroom.

Once she was in the shower, she was stuck with only her own thoughts to keep her company, and they weren't cheerful ones. She couldn't seem to banish the image of the black-clad vigilante with his hand on her throat. Why on earth had she agreed to work with him? What if she couldn't help him as much as he expected, and he decided to just take her out of the equation? What if Orion caught on and came after her or her father? Somehow she doubted that she was at the top of Matt Murdock's list of people to save.

Maybe, she considered, she could just call him up and tell him she had changed her mind. _Hi Matt, I've decided I actually don't want to spend my time playing spy with a scary vigilante, but I promise I still won't tell your secrets, so there's definitely no need to unexpectedly check up on me._ Sarah sighed. Any such conversation would undoubtedly end with him showing up at her apartment fairly immediately, and probably not in a friendly mood.

The subway ride to work was long and unpleasant. The nausea from her hangover had subsided, but was quickly replaced by an even worse twisting sensation in her stomach as she got closer and closer to work.

_Maybe I should call in sick,_ she thought. _For the rest of my life._ But she knew that her bosses would come looking for her. Ronan would seize any opportunity to have to track her down at her apartment, and that was the last thing she wanted. Even if they didn't find her, Matt would.

She shifted uneasily in her seat and looked around the subway car. She wasn't sure what she was expecting—to see the masked man lurking behind the old woman and her shopping cart full of empty cans? Or the blind lawyer and his cane, staring sightlessly at her from the crowded platform? She really didn't like the idea of him dropping by whenever he felt like it.

Arriving at the office building, she keyed her employee number into the door panel as usual and made her way to her desk. Before she could even put her things down, Ronan materialized uncomfortably close to her, as usual.

"Sarah."

She jumped, feeling more skittish than usual. Ronan didn't bother hiding the glee in his eyes at having put her on edge.

"Jumpy this morning," he noted. "Didn't get much sleep last night? I hope you, uh, enjoyed yourself, at least." He stretched his face into what almost resembled a human smile and raised his eyebrows suggestively.

Sarah gritted her teeth and swallowed the urge to take two giant steps back. "Just under the weather, Ronan. I think I have a cold."

"Right, right, a cold. Well, I hate to put more stress on your already exhausted self," he said, his voice oozing with insincerity, "but these are the new security policies for the company. Put into effect thanks our visit from the mask."

"The mask, of course," she said. Her eyes flicked down to where he was holding the packet in his left hand because his right arm was still in a cast. "How's that arm doing, by the way? Looks like he got you pretty bad," she observed casually.

He scowled, all traces of malicious glee gone from his face. Sarah bit back a spiteful smile as he slapped the stapled packet into her hand.

"Make copies and distribute them to the department heads. Get it done by eleven. All employees have to read and sign by the end of the business day tomorrow."

Sarah settled into her chair as Ronan stalked away, still slightly amused by his obvious fury towards the man who had broken his arm. Actually being at work and dealing with the sleaze she'd had to deal with every day helped to settle her anxiety, brought back her conviction that she was doing the right thing. This place and everyone in it needed to go down in flames.

She glanced through the packet, hoping to find something that she could pass along. There wasn't much. The security codes were changing, and employees would have to start wearing ID badges which would give them access to certain areas. She wondered how either of those were supposed to stop Daredevil from getting into the building. IT would be changing the passwords and security levels on all of the company computers. The rest of the packet was similarly dull. Sarah sighed in disappointment. There was nothing of use there.

The rest of the day was similarly disappointing. Employees and clients came and went, but nothing that came across Sarah's desk was remotely interesting or suspicious. She wasn't sure whether to feel frustrated or relieved that she hadn't found anything useful yet.

That night, she was on edge, expecting to hear a knock at the door—or window—or hear her phone ring. Or maybe to just turn a corner in her apartment and see him standing there. She didn't know if he would expect her to have information for him already, and she wasn't anxious to find out how he would respond when she didn't. But hours passed and he didn't appear, and she was finally able to fall into an uneasy sleep.

~*~

The next day was slightly more successful. A man called from the company that provided their security cameras and scanners, saying that he was about to fax over some forms that needed to be signed and faxed back immediately. The forms were standard orders for new installations and enhancements for their security equipment. But scanning through the list of new security cameras, Sarah noted with interest that only about half of them had been listed in the security update packet the employees were given. Furthermore, the cameras on the fourth floor were being switched over to a different kind. She quickly scribbled down the name of the new model so that she could Google it later.

What was the point of informing the employees about some of the new cameras, but not all of them? It almost seemed like they were looking at someone within the company. Luckily, that someone didn't seem to be the secretary. She was relieved to see that while there would still be two cameras in the lobby, they were to remain aimed at the front door and the elevator, with none over the front desk.

Sarah quickly wrote down the new locations on a post-it and stuck it in her bag before straightening the papers and bringing them upstairs.

That night she waited nervously again to see if the masked vigilante would show up. She was relieved that at least this time she had something to tell him if he appeared. New security policies weren't exactly a goldmine of information, but it at least showed that she was trying to keep up her end of the agreement.

But again, he didn't show. She let the relief wash over her as she got into bed, but it didn't last. She was sure that when he wanted to hear what she had, he would appear, probably unexpectedly.

The next day, Friday, he would confirm this suspicion.

~*~

Sarah was so lost in thought as she rode the subway home on Friday that she almost missed her stop. Grabbing her purse, she scrambled through the doors before they closed.

Her day at work had been stressful. Ronan had come and gone from his office more frequently than usual, constantly disappearing upstairs for long periods of time, and Sarah didn't know why. Whatever it was, it unfortunately seemed to have put him in an excited mood, which always led to him harassing Sarah just a bit more than usual. But at the end of the day when she brought him her time sheet he gave her credit for the full amount of hours she had worked, which was rare.

She entered her apartment building distractedly, balancing a takeout box of Thai food in one hand and her mail in the other. She headed for the stairwell, reaching for the door just as it swung open and Mrs. Benedict hobbled out, followed closely by a familiar blind lawyer.

_Damn._

Sarah held her breath, hoping that maybe by some miracle he wouldn't sense her standing there. She was soon reminded of why she generally didn't believe in miracles as Mrs. Benedict loudly greeted her by name.

"Sarah!" she rasped. "I was just thinking of you. One of my granddaughters is moving—to South Korea, can you believe that?—to go teach English, and she's leaving behind all of these boxes of perfectly good clothes that I know must be your size. You have to come over soon and look at them. There's tops, and skirts, and those tiny clubbing dresses. Do you like cardigans? Of course you like cardigans, who doesn't? They're an American classic."

"Um, I—"

"You remember Matthew Murdock, right?" Mrs. Benedict continued. "You met him on Tuesday. I don't think I introduced you. Matthew, this is Sarah Corrigan—" Sarah winced. _There goes any hope of him not knowing my full name._ "—she lives just down the hall from me. I know you can't see her, but she's just the cutest thing, trust me. She's got these big blue eyes and this long hair that I keep telling her would look so nice in a French braid. I'm always telling her. She doesn't listen."

"It's nice to meet you, Sarah," Matt said, grinning at her. Clearly he was skilled at playing along like everything was normal. She supposed he had practice.

"Y-yeah. You too," Sarah stuttered, slowly taking a small step towards the stairwell.

Mrs. Benedict was too busy rifling around in the gigantic handbag she carried with her to notice Sarah's discomfort.

"Confound everything! I don't have my reading glasses. Matthew, I'm sorry, can you be a dear and wait for just a minute while I go grab them? I can't read a blessed word without them."

"It's no problem, Mrs. Benedict," he replied politely. "Are you sure you don't want me to go get them for you?"

"Oh, goodness no, honey. I can do it. Oh—Sarah will wait with you! You're not in a rush, are you?" she asked. Sarah, who was still sidling towards the stairwell, was caught off guard. She turned back to Mrs. Benedict.

"What? Oh, n-no, I can't," Sarah said quickly. "I, um, I really have to be—"

"Nonsense! Matthew is a guest, and you don't abandon guests in your lobby, you know that. I'll only be a moment."

"But—"

"I'd love the company," Matt said, smiling charmingly at Mrs. Benedict. He looked all the world like a respectable, charismatic lawyer.

It was so strange to see him in a suit and tie, wearing dark, round sunglasses instead of a black mask. Even the jagged cut on his face had largely healed past the point of being noticeable. He looked every inch a normal blind man, and it was impossible for her to reconcile the man standing in front of her with the one she had met in the alleyway earlier that week.

Mrs. Benedict beamed back at him. "Perfect. You two chat for a bit, you'll get along just great."

"I'm sure we'll find something to talk about," Matt said, his casual smile looking more like a smirk as he turned his attention to Sarah.

"I'm gonna take the elevator back up. Going down the stairs was enough for me today. Don't judge me. I'm old," Mrs. Benedict cackled, clearly oblivious to the tension in the room. "I'll be back in a flash."

Sarah watched helplessly as the elderly woman got on the elevator and pressed the button for her floor. When they made eye contact, Mrs. Benedict winked at her, and Sarah remembered with a sinking feeling how the older woman had hinted at wanting to set Sarah and Matt up when she had shared a cab with her. She wondered how long 'a flash' would actually be, and prayed it would be short.

The elevator doors closed, and the two of them were alone.

Sarah turned back to Matt, who was standing casually with his hands folded on his cane. The remnants of a smirk still lingered on his face.

"So, Sarah," he said. "How was work?"


	4. Adjacent

### Chapter Four: Adjacent

Sarah opened her mouth, then shut it again as she realized she didn't know what to say. How does one begin such a conversation? Just casually delve into the espionage talk?

Matt raised his eyebrows at her silence. "You…do know I can still tell you're there even if you're being very quiet, right?"

Sarah's cheeks flushed. "I know that," she replied hotly. "I just didn't know how to—I mean…we're really going to talk about that stuff right now? In the middle of the lobby?"

"I thought you might prefer it this way, actually," he said. "But if you'd rather I come back later—"

"No!" she cut him off quickly. She assumed by 'later' he meant in the middle of the night, and probably in a different costume. "No. Uh…now is fine."

"Good." He didn't say anything else, and she took that as her queue to start talking.

"Right. Um…I don't really have much yet," she said, shifting nervously.

"Let's hear what you do have."

"Well, the company sent out a memo about all these new security policies: new passcodes, computer updates, cameras. But they ordered a bunch of new cameras that they didn't include in the memo. And all of the cameras on the fourth floor are being updated to these new high tech ones. But they weren't in the memo either."

"What's on the fourth floor?"

"I don't know yet."

Matt's brow furrowed. "You think they're watching someone in the company?"

"That's my best guess. They said it's because they don't want any more security breaches like Monday night, but…I don't really buy it."

"Anything besides the cameras and computers?" he asked.

"Well, Ronan was being really weird today, like weirder than usual—"

"Ronan?" he interrupted her.

"Oh, um, Ronan Greenfield. He's my supervisor. Not a nice guy. You, um, you actually met him," she said awkwardly. "He was the one who was, uh…shooting at you."

Matt's face was carefully blank, but she saw his jaw clench. "Yeah, I remember him. How's his arm?"

"Um…broken?" she said helpfully.

"Should've broken the other one too," he said darkly. For the first time since the conversation had started, Sarah could clearly see traces of the dangerous masked man beneath the lawyer's neatly dressed exterior.

"W-well, like I said, he's my supervisor," Sarah hastened, carefully sidestepping the subject of violence. She privately kind of enjoyed the idea of Ronan with two broken arms, but figured she probably couldn't be too far behind him on Matt's list of people whose limbs needed breaking, so maybe it was best to avoid talking about that. "He's usually in his office all day, or lurking around my desk. He doesn't really get called to chat with the higher ups very often. But today he was coming and going from meetings upstairs all day long."

"Meetings with who?"

"I don't know yet." She hoped he wouldn't ask too many more questions that she didn't yet know the answer to.

Sarah hesitated, debating whether to tell him about Ronan's strangely good mood, but dismissed it. It would probably sound dumb when she said it out loud. Matt seemed to sense her ambivalence.

"Something else?"

"Just that Ronan seemed really, um…happy today? Which I know sounds totally irrelevant, but if you knew him…he's kind of sadistic. When he's in a good mood, it's generally not because great things are about to happen."

Matt nodded slowly. "Any ideas on what he's up to?"

"No. Not yet."

Matt appeared to be contemplating what she'd told him. She took those few moments of quiet to observe him. The difference between how he looked now and his nighttime attire was jarring, but the more she looked the more she could see bits of Daredevil in Matt Murdock. Things that if you weren't looking for them, you probably wouldn't notice: a few rough looking knuckles, the ghost of a fading bruise near his temple. A certain hard edge to his voice belying a much darker side than the one he showed during the daylight hours.

She glanced at her watch and noted that Mrs. Benedict had been gone for over ten minutes. She suspected the older woman was lingering in her apartment a good bit longer than necessary in order to give the two of them more time alone. _So not the time for your weird, sneaky matchmaking, Mrs. B._

She looked back up at Matt uneasily.

"So, just to be clear," she said nervously. "You're... _not_ actually coming back later, right?"

"Why? Planning on doing something you don't want me to know about?"

"No," she said quickly. Too quickly, she realized as he raised his eyebrows. "I'd just like to be able to—I don't know, go to the grocery store without constantly checking to see if you're behind me."

"The grocery store isn't exactly where I'm concerned you'll go when I'm not looking," he said. "I'm thinking more the police station. Or Orion."

She bit her lip. "I already said I wouldn't."

"I know what you said," he said simply.

"But you can't just—just stalk me because you're worried that I'll tell people you run around in a mask—"

Sarah's words caught in her throat as Matt took a sudden step towards her. Even without the costume, his proximity made Sarah want to take a few steps back. She forced herself to stay where she was.

"Feel like keeping your voice down?" he said dangerously.

"You're the one who wanted to have this conversation in the lobby!" she whispered indignantly.

He continued speaking as though he hadn't heard her. "There are a lot of ways that I can make sure you don't share what you know. You don't like the idea of being watched? Get over it. Trust me when I say that you'd like the other alternatives a lot less."

Sarah shivered slightly at the implied threat. She could see her own wide eyed reflection in his dark glasses, which somehow were almost as intimidating as the mask.

The tense moment was interrupted by a dinging sound as the elevator doors opened and Mrs. Benedict shuffled out. Matt calmly stepped back to his original distance.

"Sorry, sorry! I'm ready to go now!" she said, waving her reading glasses in her right hand. "Took me a while to find them. You know what makes it harder to find your glasses? Not having your glasses on! It's a catch twenty-two. Chickens, eggs. So, what did you two talk about?"

Matt attempted to give Mrs. Benedict another charismatic smile, but Sarah could see that it was strained.

"Just work stuff, mostly," he said.

Sarah stared hard at him, knowing he couldn't see it. She hated how every conversation with him ended with her hands trembling and her heart racing, yet somehow he could still casually switch from intimidating to charming on a dime.

"Well, it was nice to meet you, Sarah," he said. "I'm sure I'll see you soon."

Mrs. Benedict gave Sarah a knowing look, clearly interpreting Matt's comment as a flirtation and not the warning Sarah knew it to be. She didn't respond, just yanked the door to the stairwell open angrily and hurried up the stairs, leaving a mystified Mrs. Benedict to follow Matt out the front door.

~*~

Later that night, Sarah was just getting out of the shower when she heard a text message buzz through on her phone. The hot water had helped to ease some of her stress from both her workday and her encounter with her least favorite vigilante. She grabbed her phone from the nightstand and glanced at the screen to find a text from Lauren, her long-time best friend.

_WHAT ARE YOU DOING TOMORROW NIGHT?_

Sarah raised her eyebrows at the all-caps before responding.

_Why are we shouting?!_

Lauren's reply came back quickly. _You barely respond to my texts anymore, so I figured all-caps was the best way to get your attention. Dinner with me and Greg tomorrow night?_

Sarah frowned guiltily at her friend's response. She knew that Lauren was right; Sarah had been growing more and more distant from her friends over the past months. It had started with her trying to avoid their concerned questions about why she had quit her dream job, and why she never wanted to talk about her new one. Why she was always exhausted and in a bad mood. And it had devolved into almost complete avoidance of everyone she knew.

Sarah hesitated before responding. She had just had what was probably the most stressful week of her life, and she knew Lauren would be able to tell something was off as soon as she saw her. She always could. And she would be full of questions that Sarah couldn't answer. She was exhausted just thinking about how many lies she would have to tell her friends now.

_I'm so so so sorry_ , Sarah texted back. _I have to go over to my dad's tomorrow night._ Now she felt twice as guilty; once for avoiding her best friend, and once for using her father for a lie. She wasn't actually going to see him until Tuesday, but she knew it was the quickest way to get Lauren to accept her excuse.

Lauren's response was short: _:( :( :(_

Sarah sighed, replying: _Don't hate me. We'll go out next Saturday! Seriously._

_Promise?_

_Pinky promise. Wherever you want._

_Don't lie to a pregnant woman, Sarah. Being lied to could make me go into premature labor and hemorrhage to death._

Sarah smiled at her friend's theatrical response.

_Okay, well let's just hope the baby doesn't inherit your drama queen genes, or Greg will straight up leave you both._

_Rude. I'm going to hold you to your promise. Next Saturday!_

Sarah set her phone down and sighed heavily, leaning against her pillows. She was still only wearing a towel, and she knew she was getting her sheets all wet.

Standing up, she padded over to her dresser to find her pajamas and frowned when she caught sight of herself in the mirror. With half of her paycheck going to her father's debt, her standard of living wasn't quite as high as it used to be. She could barely afford to pay the rent and her bills, much less stock her kitchen with tons of food, and it was beginning to show just slightly. She had always been slender, but now her collar bone was sticking out just a little too much, and her cheeks were a little more hollow. The stress of her job made her look slightly paler, emphasized the tired circles under her eyes. Maybe not anything that a stranger would notice, but she could.

She scowled at herself, then quickly grabbed her pajamas out of the drawer and stepped out of sight of her reflection.

~*~

The next morning, Matt Murdock repressed a groan of pain as his alarm clock went off. Slamming a hand down on it to turn off the monotone female voice informing him of the time, he laid still in bed for a few moments longer.

He had spent the night before taking out a group of Irish thugs who had been collecting protection money from a string of shop owners on 114th, bleeding their finances to the point of near bankruptcy. He had dropped down on the five of them as they exited a bar they'd just put the lean on, cash in hand. During the brawl, one of them had caught him hard in the shoulder with what he suspected was a baseball bat, and another had badly bruised some of his ribs. Overall, nowhere near the worst condition he had ever woken up in. But it didn't make getting out of bed any more pleasant.

However, the memory of the men neatly tied up and waiting for the arrival of the police helped dull the pain a bit, as did the echo of the bar owner's surprised words of gratitude when Matt had handed him his money back and told him his establishment would be safe from now on.

Heaving himself out of bed, he made his way to the shower. Foggy would be there in about half an hour to go over some files for a custody case they were working. Their number of clients had been slowly increasing in the few weeks since Fisk's arrest, and when Matt had suggested they might want to spend part of Saturday catching up on paperwork, Foggy had reluctantly agreed. He had refused to meet at the office, however, insisting that it would feel too much like a work day.

Matt had just pulled a shirt over his head when he heard a knock. He could sense Foggy scanning him for injuries as soon as he opened the door.

"You don't look completely awful," Foggy said by way of greeting.

Matt grinned tiredly. "Good morning to you too, Foggy."

Foggy brushed past him, balancing a stack of files and a bag of what smelled like bagels.

"I don't know how I feel about this paperwork on a Saturday thing. Karen gets the day off, but we have to work? Seems like we're getting gypped."

Matt chuckled. "If you really want Karen to come here and make us coffee, I'm sure she would."

He knew Foggy was making a face. "I'll pass. I really think that her coffee might be a subtle attempt to try and kill us and take over our lucrative establishment."

They settled into a routine, Matt running his fingers over the Braille copies of the files, while Foggy sifted through his own, both making comments when necessary. After about an hour of this, Foggy leaned back in his chair and stretched, eyeing Matt.

"How's your crazy spy deal with the secretary going? Have you been to see her yet?"

Matt looked up. "Sarah? Yeah. I saw her yesterday."

"And was she excited to see you?"

"Ah...not so much."

Foggy sighed and shook his head. "Seems like a dangerous game. Relying on someone who not only works for a criminal front, but actually _refused_ to stop working there when given the option."

"I don't get the impression that she's works for them because she loves it," Matt said.

"But she won't actually tell you why?"

"No. But they have something on her. I think."

"So, that something could be that she…murdered someone. Or that she, I don't know, used to deal meth to fourth graders," Foggy speculated.

"Are fourth graders really a big demographic for meth?"

"Not the point, Matt! Them being bad guys doesn't make her a good guy. Just because you suspect she's not crazy about working there, doesn't mean she's not crazy, period. This could all be a huge trap."

Matt sighed in exasperation, even though he knew—beneath the extreme exaggeration—that Foggy was right. She could very well be planning to stab him in the back with this agreement they had made. She had sounded honest enough when he had listened to her heartbeat, but his lie detecting skills weren't completely foolproof, especially when the person in question's heart rate kept going up and down from fear anyway.

"Maybe it is. I don't really know," he admitted. "But it's not like I can just leave her alone. Not with everything she knows. And if I have to drop in to keep tabs on her occasionally, I might as well get some information in return."

Foggy grumbled noncommittally and shuffled his papers. Neither of them spoke for a few minutes, but Matt could tell Foggy wanted to say something. He waited patiently until the other man finally piped up.

"So, when you 'keep tabs' on her, what exactly are you doing? Hiding in her shower and listening to her make dinner at night, or…?"

"What? No," Matt said, laughing at the image his friend painted. "I mean, there's no way for me to know what she's doing all the time. But if I'm already out and I'm within listening distance, I...focus in on her apartment. Just for a minute. To make sure she isn't in there planning a trap with her coworkers or something." He grew more sober again. "I don't—I don't actually go out of my way to follow her around. I just…need her to think that I do. So she'll keep quiet."

Foggy was silent for a minute. "Those are some interesting mind games you're playing with her, Matt."

Matt sighed. "I…yeah. I know. But I don't really have any other option. At least not until I know if she's trustworthy or not, and who knows how long that could take? She's not easy to read."

"Sounds pretty stressful for her in the meantime," Foggy said, and Matt could hear a note of sympathy in his voice. "Never knowing when your costumed ass is going to be lurking around."

"Are you on her side now? Just a minute ago you were accusing her of being a murderer who sells drugs to children," Matt said.

"And that possibility still stands!" Foggy argued. "I'm just saying…Daredevil's a scary dude. I don't think I'd want to be in her shoes."

Matt had no argument for that. He rubbed the bridge of his nose tiredly. "It's just...complicated."

"It always is. I'm telling you, man," Foggy said, leaning back in his chair and shaking his head, but there was a slight smile in his voice now. "Beautiful women. Questionable morals. Every time."

"You have no way of knowing if she's attractive," Matt argued. "You've never seen her."

"Neither have you!" Foggy countered. "But if you can figure out when a woman is beautiful without seeing her, then so can I. Besides, I just know. You're predictable, Murdock."

Matt smiled weakly, trying to keep his mind off his own questionable morality over the past week. Such thoughts could wait until he had time to visit Father Lantom. For now, he had a custody case to focus on.

~*~

Sarah's weekend—not including her encounter with Matt on Friday—was a surprisingly calm one. Yes, she spent much of the weekend nervously anticipating an unannounced visit, but to her surprise she had been blissfully left alone by both sleazy coworkers and menacing vigilantes. The pleasant uneventfulness of her weekend made it especially unpleasant to walk into work on Monday and immediately have Ronan's sneering face appear at her desk.

"We're needed upstairs," he informed her. She furrowed her brow in confusion.

"Me too? Why? By who?"

"I don't know," he answered sweetly. "Maybe they just need someone in a skirt to make us coffee while we do actual work. Come on. It's on the fourth floor."

Sarah ignored his lewd remark and followed him into the elevator. When they reached their floor, Ronan led her to an office with a closed door. He knocked, and they heard a voice inside tell them to come in.

When they entered the office, she saw that there were already four people in there, three of whom she immediately recognized as having been in the building the night Daredevil had paid them a visit. Two of the men sat in the two chairs in front of the desk, while the large Russian man who had been hurled into her elevator stood behind them. She had seen him around the building a few times, but couldn't remember his name, just his thick accent.

An unfamiliar fourth occupant, a very tan man wearing a suit with a bright white tie, sat behind the desk. Ronan slouched over to stand next to the Russian, while Sarah lingered off to the side, close to the door.

"Welcome! I'm Jason," the man behind the desk introduced himself, smiling broadly at all of them. His grin was incredibly white, much like his tie, and he seemed to have an unusually high number of teeth in his smile. "I'm your new head of security."

"What happened to Marcus?" one of the men asked. He had a heavy brow and round shoulders; Sarah recognized him from last Monday night, but otherwise didn't think she had seen him around before. He was wearing a tracksuit, unlike the other men, who were all wearing business attire. She wasn't sure if he worked there or not.

"Unfortunately, Marcus appeared to have oversold his ability to keep this company secure. He's no longer with us," Jason said dismissively, his voice still uncomfortably cheerful.

Sarah felt a stab of nervousness. Marcus had been a remarkably incompetent head of security, and unless his replacement was going to be equally inept—and it didn't look like he would—it would make Sarah's mission much more difficult.

"I asked all of you to come by because, as I'm sure you've figured out, you were all in the building when our masked friend dropped by. Now, I've read the police reports, but I'd still like to go over what happened that night. Unfortunately we are two men short, but as soon as they're out of the hospital and back at work I'll be speaking with them, too. So…who wants to start?"

No one answered. Jason's smile didn't falter.

"Okay. Who saw him first?"

One of the seated men—the one not wearing a tracksuit—scowled reluctantly and raised his hand. Sarah saw that he had a cast where several of his fingers had been broken. That must have been the man she heard Matt interrogating, she observed.

"I did," the man said. "I was going down the hallway to meet with the others about the…you know."

Sarah wondered if the vagueness of his statement was because of her presence. As if she didn't know that sinister meetings went on at their building and elsewhere almost every night. Unless it was something useful she could pass on, she didn't want to hear about it anyway. She tuned back in to what Broken Fingers was saying.

"—and then he just appears. Out of nowhere. Like he was just part of the shadows or something. Didn't hear no windows break or nothing. He was just there, punchin' me right in the face."

Sarah stifled a small smirk and wondered if she had always taken such pleasure in the thought of horrible people getting hurt, or if it was only since she had started working for them. She listened closely as the other men chimed in with similar recollections. From what it sounded like, it was mostly a blur of broken bones, concussions, and lots of blood.

"What did he look like?" Jason inquired.

Ronan shrugged. "White guy."

"Muscles," was all the bulky Russian said.

"Pretty tall," Tracksuit commented.

"Yeah, I'd say probably around six-foot-six or six-foot-seven," Broken Fingers chimed in, and the other men nodded.

Sarah kept her face carefully blank, trying to hide her skepticism. They definitely weren't wrong about the muscles, but having been within uncomfortable proximity to Matt several times now, she knew that he was just brushing six feet, maybe an inch shorter. Still more than tall enough to easily tower over her, but definitely not over these men. She wasn't sure if the men were playing up his height to save face, or if in their concussed memories they honestly remembered him that way.

Jason looked similarly doubtful. "Right…well he would have to be a pretty big guy to get the drop on six grown men, right?" he said cheerfully, but it was clearly a reprimand. No one responded.

"And one lady, of course," Jason said, nodding at Sarah. "Did you get a look at him, Ms…I'm sorry, what's your name again?"

Sarah felt her face flush as everyone in the room turned to look at her. "Sarah. Corrigan. And uh…not, not really. Just that he was wearing a black mask," she said unhelpfully. "And he looked pretty fast, from what I saw. But I was only in the room for a minute."

"Yeah, I saw her get off the elevator and then run into the other room to hide in a corner somewhere," Ronan sneered. "Brave girl."

"I'm sorry, should I have tried to fight him and gotten my arm broken too?" Sarah asked evenly.

Jason chuckled, but the noise sounded oddly false. "Alright, alright. Getting back on track. I need to know if he said anything important."

Most of the men shook their heads; evidently Matt had been more of a fighter than a talker.

"Only said one thing to me," Ronan piped up. "I'm shooting at him, and then somehow he's behind me. He tells me he doesn't like guns, and then knocks me out with the goddamn thing. Real funny guy."

Jason nodded, turning his attention to Broken Fingers. "He mostly spoke to you, as I understand it, Mr…Yates? Brian Yates, correct?"

Brian Yates—as it turns out he was actually named—had a sheen of sweat on his forehead, which he wiped off with his bandaged hand. "Uh, yeah, yeah. He asks me who's in charge now. I tell him I dunno. He starts breaking my fingers. Asks me again. Still didn't know. And then, uh, everything went black. That was it."

Sarah clearly remembered there being a second half of that conversation, in which Matt had asked him where the employee roster was and he had told him immediately. Yates glanced sideways at her nervously, clearly thinking about the same conversation and wondering if she had heard it. Well, he didn't have to worry. Sarah didn't plan on speaking any more than necessary in this particular meeting.

"Well…lucky for us that you have such well-sealed lips, huh?" Jason said, and something in the tone of his voice sent a shiver down Sarah's spine. Almost as if he could sense her discomfort, he turned his smiling spotlight on her.

"You look remarkably uninjured, Ms. Corrigan. I take it you managed to avoid interacting with him?"

Sarah swallowed. "Um…yes."

"How fortunate. And you couldn't hear anything he was saying from your hiding spot?"

"No," she said. "Sorry."

"Probably too busy crying," Ronan muttered, and Tracksuit snickered.

Sarah looked at them, about to snap again, but then had a different idea. She turned to Jason with wide eyes.

"You know, I was crying," she lied. "A lot. I, um…I've never seen anyone do that much damage before. It was scary. And I'm really lucky that he didn't know where I was hiding." _Yes, he did._ "I feel a lot better knowing we have so much more added security." _It won't help you._ "It makes it less scary knowing he can't come back here." _He's definitely coming backing here, and I'm helping him do it._

Jason nodded, apparently convinced by her frightened act, which she knew was much more believable due to the genuine nervousness in her voice.

"Well…we'll be taking care of him as a problem very soon. Don't worry about that. Thanks so much for coming by, everyone. And if you remember anything else important…my door is always open."

Sarah took a last glance at Jason's blinding smile before skirting out of the office ahead of the others. She made her way back down to her desk, relieved to be out of that meeting, but she hadn't been sitting for more than a minute when Ronan's shadow fell over her desk. She looked up at him, not liking the wide grin on his face.

"You know what he meant when he said we're taking care of it, right?" he said in a low voice.

Sarah shook her head slowly. "No…what?"

"He's set up a whole task force just to track Daredevil down. Find out who he really is. And I've been placed on it," he said gleefully.

Sarah's heart raced. "A…task force?" she repeated. That sounded intense and very official.

"Yeah," Ronan said. "Starting in a few days, I'll need you to start setting up meetings, placing some special orders. So resist the urge to hide under your desk, sweetheart. All goes well, I figure he'll be dead pretty soon."

"Must be a big team for something that important," she said casually.

"Nope. Just a few of the best and brightest. They're giving us all the resources we need," he said, not bothering to hide the bragging note in his tone. "And when we find him? I'm going to break both of his arms before I shoot him."

He gave her a sick grin before walking back to his office. Halfway there, he turned back to her.

"By the way, I don't appreciate you mouthing off to me in front of others like that. You know, I'm thinking that there was no one here covering the front desk while we were upstairs. You shouldn't really get paid for that time spent _not_ doing your job. Let's take an hour off of your pay, huh?"

Sarah knew they hadn't been in that office for anywhere close to an hour, but she kept her mouth closed. Responding to Ronan never ended with good results, and an hour's pay wasn't worth it. Besides, she suddenly had more important things to think about. Like how she was going to explain this new development to a certain vigilante who definitely would not be pleased.

She looked up as someone came out of the stairwell. It was Brian Yates, the man with the broken fingers. He hurried over to Ronan's office and entered without knocking, closing the door behind him. Sarah raised her eyebrows. It would make sense that both men would be on the task force; broken bones were a pretty good motivation to track someone down.

Turning her attention to her computer, she quietly brought up the employee information files.

~*~

Hours later, it was just past nine and Sarah was in the middle of making herself some tea to calm her nerves. She placed the full tea kettle on the burner and turned the knob up. Glancing down, she saw the stack of unopened and probably overdue bills on her counter top. She frowned and pushed them aside. She didn't need anything else stressing her out tonight. She was absolutely not looking forward to telling Matt about this new development at work, and with her luck she knew that he would undoubtedly turn up when she least wanted him to. She was even expecting it.

It still didn't stop her from jumping when a sudden knock came at her window.

Sarah reluctantly made her way over to the window and pulled the blinds up. She could barely make out his black outline against the equally dark shadows. Inhaling deeply, she unlatched the window and slid it open. He was leaning against the railing opposite her.

"Mind if I come in?"

Sarah sighed, stepping back from the window. He easily pulled himself through, his feet making no sound as they landed on the floor.

"What do you have?" he said, moving straight to business.

She debated where to start. "I met the new head of security. His name is Jason. I guess they fired the old one after you got in the building. Anyway, this new guy, he…had a lot of questions about you."

"About me?" he repeated, tilting his head back.

"Yeah."

"And why was he asking you?"

"Not just me," she said quickly. "He gathered everyone who was there the night you broke in. Except for two guys who are, um…still in the hospital."

He nodded, his lip curling slightly. "What was he asking?"

"Basically the same stuff we all went over with the police. What you looked like, what you said, how you got in. No one really knew anything. Which Jason kind of seemed to already know, so I don't know why he was asking."

"Maybe trying to see if your stories were still the same."

That made sense. There was a sudden loud whistling noise and Sarah jumped. She'd forgotten about the boiling water.

"S-sorry. I'm making tea," Sarah explained unnecessarily. She hurried over to the stove and snatched the kettle off the burner. She grabbed a mug for herself and then hesitated. _What's the etiquette for offering house guests tea when those guests are wearing a mask and also generally threaten you every time they see you?_ After a moment of debate, she turned back to him.

"Do you…want some?" she asked awkwardly.

She could have sworn she heard him laugh quietly, but he had his head down and she couldn't see his face clearly enough to be sure.

"No. Thanks."

She placed the tea bag in the mug and poured the hot water over it, then walked reluctantly back to where the vigilante was still leaning against the windowsill.

"So, you don't think he caught on?" he asked. "That you know anything about me?"

"No," she said. "He just thinks that I'm worried about you coming back. And he told me they'd be, um, taking care of that problem. Soon, apparently."

"What does that mean?"

She hesitated, fiddling nervously with the tea bag string hanging out of her mug. She was dreading getting to this part of the conversation.

"Sarah," he said dangerously. "What does that mean?"

"Well, I, uh, I think he was referring to this…task force that's been set up."

"A task force. On what?"

Sarah bit her lip. "On…you," she answered reluctantly. "Finding out who you are. Tracking you down."

He was very still. "And who's on this task force?"

"Well, I-I don't know everyone who's on it yet. But, there's Ronan, for one."

"Ronan…as in your supervisor?"

"Yeah."

There was a long silence.

"So, just to be clear," he said slowly, and his tone made her pulse quicken again. "Your supervisor, who you answer to every day, is now on a team of people who have been given the single goal of figuring out my identity. Which, conveniently…you already happen to know."

Sarah nodded. "Yeah. That's about right."

He laughed bitterly. "The one thing you're supposed to be keeping from them and now you're on a task force designed to discover it."

Sarah cringed. "Well, I'm—I'm not _on_ the task force, technically. Ronan is. I'm just task force…adjacent."

"Task force adjacent," he repeated.

Sarah bit her lip and didn't respond, waiting for his reaction.

"That's just…great," he said finally, gritting his teeth. He suddenly smacked the windowsill in frustration, and she jumped at the loud impact. "Perfect."

He turned away from her, pacing around the small space for a few minutes. She watched him carefully and wondered once again how he moved so easily without being able to see.

"Alright," he said finally, after several minutes of pacing in silence. Sarah was relieved to hear that his voice sounded much calmer. "The new head of security. Jason. What's his last name?"

"I don't know," Sarah replied. "I tried looking him up, but he hasn't been put in the system yet."

"You think he put this thing together, or is he answering to someone else?"

"I'm not sure. He's new, so there's a good chance he's getting his orders from someone higher up."

"Like whoever replaced Fisk," Matt said.

"Maybe."

"Do you know anyone else who might be on this team?"

"Um, yeah. I think so? After I talked to Ronan, I saw Broken Fingers go into his office—"

"Sorry," he interrupted her. "Broken…fingers? Are we…sure that's his name?"

"Ah—Brian Yates," she said hastily, embarrassed. "Brian Yates…is his name. He was the one who gave you the employee roster. And he was in Ronan's office for a long time after the meeting."

"To talk about the task force."

"I think so."

"So, Ronan and Yates. That's who we have so far?"

"So far. I don't think the others will be too hard to figure out. Ronan said I'd be setting their meetings."

"Alright," he said, "Do you have any way of accessing their home addresses from work next time you go in?"

"I already got them for you," she said, holding up a slip of paper. She held it out to him and he cocked his head. She cringed as she realized that he obviously wouldn't be able to read it himself, and she retracted her hand quickly. "And…I will…read them out loud to you. Obviously."

He didn't respond, but the corner of his mouth twitched slightly. After she had finished reading him the two addresses, he reached for the window, opening it again.

"I'll pay a visit to Yates tonight," he said, gracefully climbing through the small opening. "I'll see if he's learned anything more about his employers since the last time I questioned him. Tomorrow I want you to try to find out who else is on that task force. I need names and addresses," he ordered, then started to heave himself up and over the railing of the fire escape.

"You're welcome," Sarah muttered under her breath, bristling at his authoritative tone of voice. He turned his head back to her and she cursed silently as she realized he had heard her. Just when they'd made it through a whole conversation without him threatening her, and she had to open her big mouth.

He was quiet for a second.

"Thanks," he said. Sarah blinked in surprise. Then he was gone.


	5. Doubts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, friends! Thank you so much for all of the kind reviews; this fandom is so great. I know you all love to see lots of Matt in the story, but this chapter is pretty heavily Sarah-centered. I think you'll enjoy it anyway, and don't worry-next chapter will have LOTS of Matt and Sarah interactions! For now, those of you who have been asking about Sarah's father will finally get to meet him! I hope you like it; let me know what you think!

### Chapter Five: Doubts

The following morning began normally enough. Sarah arrived at work on time as usual, and even had a good half hour of time to herself to get paperwork and filing done before anyone came through the door. For a brief time, it seemed as though the day might pass uneventfully.

But as the morning continued, a strange atmosphere fell over the workplace. An odd current of excitement and catastrophe ran through the entire building. Ronan disappeared upstairs for far too long, and on her way back from the bathroom Sarah heard snatches of a conversation between two employees speaking lowly to each other by the copier.

"—left actual finger marks on his neck, I heard—"

"—oh, that's sick, I _knew_ he wasn't as heroic as the news says—"

The employees continued on their way and their voices faded out. Sarah watched them go apprehensively, debating whether they had been talking about the person she thought they were, or if her imagination was simply lending context to their conversation when it wasn't really there. She had to wait another hour to find out, when a tall man in a leather jacket came out of the elevator and headed towards the front door. Another man who had been coming out of the stairwell hustled to catch up with him, calling out to the taller man to wait up.

"Hey! I heard you were one of the ones that found Yates," the shorter man said, huffing slightly from his jog across the lobby. "So, uh, what's the story? What happened?"

Sarah listened closely, being careful not to look up from her computer screen. There was a strange feeling of dread hanging low in her stomach.

The first man felt around in his pocket and retrieved a pack of cigarettes before he responded. The two appeared not to even register Sarah sitting there, and she tapped randomly on some keys to give herself the appearance of being busy not listening.

"Looked like an interrogation gone wrong to me," the tall man responded. "Guy was tied to a chair, and he was kind of bloodied up, like someone had been smacking him around."

"So, what, he got beat to death?"

"Nah. I guess whoever it was got tired of interrogating him. Choked him to death."

" _That's_ what everyone's gossiping about? Christ. I thought it was something interesting. I mean, it's not unheard of for people to get choked to death around here, am I right?"

"Well, word has it that this one was the work of Daredevil. Some neighbor saw a man in a black mask leaving Yates' apartment last night, and when we stopped by this morning Brian was long dead. Guess Daredevil didn't like whatever the poor guy told him, huh?"

Sarah heard a ringing in her ears, and her mouth was suddenly very dry. She could barely comprehend what the man had just said. The two men continued out the door together to smoke their cigarettes, and she took her shaking hands off the keyboard and pressed them to her mouth.

_"This one was the work of Daredevil…this morning Brian was long dead…."_

Brian Yates was dead. The man whose address she had given to Matt was dead.

His words echoed in her head, and suddenly it was like a horrible fog had been lifted, and she could clearly see how stupid she had been for the past week. Playing spy with a vigilante like this was a movie. This was real life, and a man had just been murdered. A man whose blood could very well be partially on her hands. If what that men in the lobby had said was true, and Matt did kill him…what did that make her? An accomplice? An accessory?

_Holy shit._

Sarah shoved her chair back abruptly and grabbed her purse. As she rushed towards the front door, she almost ran directly into Ronan, who made a snippy comment about her leaving her post.

"L-lunch break," she mumbled, not bothering to stop and hear his response before bolting out of the building. She made her way down the sidewalk and around the corner to an empty bench at a now out-of-service bus stop. It was just out of sight—and earshot—of Orion.

Sarah fumbled in her purse for her phone and pulled it out. She found his number under recent calls—she had refused to save it in her contacts the night they met, as one last act of denial. She didn't know if he carried his burner phone on him during the day, but she hit call anyway. The phone rang once, twice, three times. The nausea began twisting her stomach harder as she waited. Finally, she heard the line click as he answered.

"What's going on?" Matt said in a low voice, not bothering with a greeting.

"Did you kill him?" she asked, breathing hard.

"What?"

"Brian Yates. _Brian Yates_. Did you kill him, Matt?" she said, unable to keep the hysteria out of her voice.

"Sarah, I—hang on—" He paused and she could hear muffled movement as he apparently moved someplace more private. "What are you talking about? I didn't kill anybody."

"You went to visit him last night and now he's dead, Matt. Everyone at Orion is talking about it. You said you were going to _talk_ to him!"

"No—what? I didn't—I didn't kill him. He was alive when I left that apartment."

"They said he was tied to a chair. Said it looked like an interrogation gone wrong. That's exactly what you were going there to do."

"And I did, but I didn't _kill_ him. I don't kill people."

"He was choked to death, Matt! Someone choked him with their bare hands. Isn't that kind of your move?" she said, brushing her fingers against her own throat, where he had cut her own air supply off not too long ago.

"Sarah, you have to calm down," his low voice came through the line. "I did not kill Yates. I went to his place but he didn't know anything useful, so I left. He might have been a bit worse for wear when I was done with him, but he was alive, I swear."

"If you didn't kill him, who did?"

"I don't know!" He sounded agitated. "Maybe someone at Orion."

"On the very same night you went to interrogate him?"

He was silent on the other end of the line. Sarah pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut.

"I—I know how this looks," he said finally. "But you need to believe me."

"I gave you that address, Matt," she said desperately. "I sent you there. If you killed him, th-then so did I. Oh, my God. Oh, God, what was I thinking, getting into this…"

"No. Sarah. Listen to me," he said, and she could hear alarm in his voice. "Do not start second guessing this arrangement."

She laughed hysterically. "Yeah, why would I do that?"

"I know you're upset and—and scared. But I need you to promise me that you're not going to do anything crazy," he said slowly, like he was talking to a spooked animal.

"Like what, l-like choke someone to death?"

There was another silence. "Like involving…people who don't need to know about this."

She exhaled shakily. He still thought she was going to go to the police. As if she could do that now. She had willingly worked with a vigilante, even though she knew he was dangerous, knew that his morals were a grey area. And it might have cost a man his life. And if Matt didn't kill him, then someone else was out there murdering people, and the police couldn't protect her if that someone came for her.

"I'm—I'm not going to the police. But—" The words caught in her throat.

"Sarah? But what?" She thought she could hear a note of anxiety in his voice.

"Just…please tell me that I didn't help you kill a man, Matt. Please," she whispered.

"You didn't. I promise you."

She ran a shaking hand through her hair. She needed time to think, to process all of this.

"I—I have to go," she said.

"Sarah, wait—"

She hung up before he could finish.

Looking back at the tall, uninviting building waiting behind her, Sarah bit her lip. She couldn't go back in there. Instead, she slipped her phone back into her bag and walked the other way, not sure of where she was even planning to go.

She ended up at a park outside of the borders of Hell's Kitchen, closer to her father's apartment, and a good hour and a half walk from work. She was grateful that she had worn her flats that day and not heels, although she knew she would still have blisters when she took them off. She didn't particularly care.

There was a large metal swing set in the middle of the park, and figuring any neighborhood kids were probably in school, Sarah tiredly walked over and sat down on one of the swings. She kicked off her shoes, then listlessly pushed herself back and forth a few inches, letting her foot brush against the dusty ground.

She had spent the entire walk thinking about what had happened, and she still couldn't decide if she thought Matt was telling her the truth. On the one hand, she knew he saved people, helped people. She'd heard the stories about him saving girls from getting raped in alleyways, or beating up hired guns who were targeting helpless families. He was making a difference in Hell's Kitchen, a positive difference. What she was less sure about were his methods of doing so.

Sarah had heard the rumors about the decapitated Russian. That was the worst one. Some people said it was Fisk, others said it was Daredevil. It was widely acknowledged that Fisk had arranged for those two police officers to be killed in order to frame the vigilante, but until the actual court case got underway that wasn't official. Whispers of other mysterious deaths surrounded the vigilante constantly—a drug addict who had been thrown off a roof; a thug who had been found with his face impaled on a metal stake; even James Wesley himself had been found mysteriously shot to death in a warehouse. It seemed like too great of a coincidence that all of these deaths just happened to follow the masked man around, with no witnesses and nothing but his word that he didn't kill them. That he simply didn't kill people, as a principle.

People like Brian Yates. She hadn't known the man. She didn't even know what he did at the company, but she felt like it wasn't too big of an leap to assume that he hadn't been a great person. Most clandestine nighttime meetings at her workplace—like the one at which he had gotten his fingers broken—were to make plans too dark and illegal to discuss during work hours, even at a company like Orion, which clearly functioned as nothing but a front for such activities. But despite her confidence that he had been a horrible person, she didn't think she could accept having played a part in taking his life. That wasn't what she had signed up for. She just wanted them all in prison or somewhere far away, so that she and her father could continue their lives in peace.

At the thought of her father, Sarah sighed and checked her watch. She had left Orion at around 1:00, and between her phone conversation and her long trek across town, now it was almost 4:30. She hadn't realized she had been sitting on the swing for so long.

She looked up just in time to see a red headed woman with a small toddler looking at her distastefully from across the playground, eyeing her bare feet, windswept hair, and disheveled office attire. The woman shook her head and walked away, and Sarah just barely heard her telling the young boy to always avoid drunk adults who were lurking on playgrounds in broad daylight. The boy looked back at her with wide eyes.

"No! No, I'm not…not drunk," she began to protest, but trailed off. The woman and her child were too far away by that point to even bother. Still, Sarah took that as her cue to get off the swing and head to her father's.

"Kind of wish I was drunk," she muttered to herself as she slipped her shoes back onto her dusty feet and picked her purse up off the ground.

Tuesday dinners always began at 5:30 sharp, and Sarah always tried not to be late, so as not to throw off their careful routine. Today, she was early. She rang the doorbell at 5:16 on the dot, and Mitch Corrigan answered the door, wearing an old plaid button down and worn jeans, as usual.

"Hi, honey," he said, giving her a tight hug. "You're early! You look…tired."

Sarah looked down at her slightly disheveled appearance and laughed, and she was proud to hear only a tiny note of hysteria behind it. "Yeah, I've had, uh…a day."

She dropped her purse near the door as she entered, inhaling the familiar comforting scents of the house.

"I'm thinking we go simple tonight," she said, turning to her father. "I don't have a lot of energy to cook. How about…spaghetti?"

"You know I love spaghetti," Mitch said. "But you don't have to cook if you're tired. We can order in."

"Oh, no. You order in all the time; the deal is that I cook you something when I come over," Sarah responded, making her way into the kitchen area and rummaging through the cupboards for pasta. Her father procured two plates and some silverware, bringing them over to the kitchen table. This was their routine: Sarah would cook, and her father would set the table with plates, napkins, condiments. She knew that the familiar, mechanical routine was good for him.

As she busied herself boiling the water and heating the sauce, Mitch settled himself at the kitchen table.

"So, how is everything?" he asked. "How's work?"

Sarah kept her eyes trained the pot of water, studiously avoiding looking at him. "It's great!" she lied, forcing herself to sound cheerful. "I, um, I'm working on an accompaniment piece for next week. I'll be playing with this…really great soloist."

"That's great, honey. Do they have a good piano for you to work with?"

"Yeah, it's a Baldwin. Really nice."

"A Baldwin…that's a good one, then?

"Yes, definitely. I've played them for other soloists; they're really well built."

"Good, good. I'm so glad that's working out so well for you. I always told everyone you would get places with your talent."

Sarah felt a sharp pang in her stomach and hurried to change the subject. "What'd you do today?"

He paused, thinking. "I…did a puzzle. And I watched a few of the games on TV. Do you know when the Rangers are playing?"

"Tomorrow night, I think," she said, searching in the fridge for parmesan cheese. "At seven."

"Oh, good," he said. "How's, ah…Lauren doing?"

Sarah brightened at how quickly he remembered her friend's name. "She's really great. She's huge, though. I think this baby is going to be born, like, full size. Like maybe a five year old."

"Lauren's having a baby? Your friend Lauren?"

She turned to him, the smile falling from her face slightly. "Yeah, Dad. About eight months. You, um, you've seen her a few times sine then. I brought her by about three weeks ago and you felt the baby kick."

He stared blankly at her for a second before recognition swept across his face. "Yes. Yes, I do remember. Lauren's the blonde one, then. I thought that was…Anna?"

She closed her eyes briefly before responding in a purposefully light tone, "No, I think Anna was your friend, remember? You guys went to high school together. But she did have blonde hair in the yearbook pictures, I think."

Sarah was focused on not burning the sauce and didn't notice for few minutes that he didn't answer. She turned back to him and frowned when she saw the bits of white littering the placemat in front of him. Her father was staring vacantly at the table, absently shredding the paper napkin in his hands into small pieces. She walked over and gently put a hand over his own to stop him.

"Dad," she said softly.

Mitch blinked and seemed to return to the room. He looked down at the shredded paper in his hands, confused.

"I'm sorry. I'm not sure why I did that," he said vaguely.

"It's okay," Sarah said, smiling sadly and sweeping the pieces off the table and into her palm. "I'll grab you a new one."

"Do you know when the Rangers game will be on?"

"Seven o'clock tomorrow night," she answered patiently. "I'll call and remind you."

"Thanks, baby girl."

She finished cooking the spaghetti and brought it over to the table. They made small talk as they ate, with Sarah trying not to mention anything that might tax his memory more than necessary. He had his good nights and bad ones, and tonight seemed to be leaning towards bad.

"I was actually hoping you could do me a favor, sweetheart," Mitch said during a lull.

"Is it to make you a delicious pasta dinner? Because, done," she responded, grinning.

He laughed briefly before turning more serious. "Actually, I, uh, I need you to go talk to the police about this…traffic ticket I got."

Sarah looked at him sharply. "A traffic ticket? What are you talking about? You don't drive. I didn't think you even still had keys to the car."

"I found a spare the other day, and I took the car to the store on the other side of town. The one on this side never has the sunflower seeds I like."

"Dad! That's so dangerous! You don't have a license."

"I…I thought I did. I don't know why. I haven't had a license in so long. But I didn't remember that until…until I was already being pulled over," he stood and walked over to the desk, grabbing a slip of paper and bringing it over to her. "I guess my tags are expired. The officer let the tags slide, but gave me a ticket for driving without a license. It's an expensive one."

She glanced at the ticket. It was expensive. She looked back up at her father. "The police can't nullify tickets after they've been processed, though, Dad. Only a judge can do that."

"I know, I know. But, they can recommend a dismissal, or at least leniency. It makes it easier to get the ticket lowered in court," he said.

Sarah frowned at him. How was it that he couldn't remember his television schedule or who her best friend was, but he could remember all of the legal loopholes in the book? She sighed.

"Yeah, I'll give it a try. I guess it can't hurt."

Her father smiled at her. "Thanks, Sarah. You're good at being charming. I know they'll listen to you."

"That's not really what I'm worried about, Dad. You know you can't be driving. It's so dangerous. And it's illegal."

Mitch looked at her sadly. "I was never very good at avoiding either of those things, was I?"

_Neither am I these days_ , she thought to herself. She hated seeing the pained look on his face; the guilt he still felt over things that half the time he couldn't remember doing. Money he didn't remember owing, people he didn't remember angering.

"I'll do the dishes real quick, alright?" she said, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

"You know, I can do dishes on my own. I think I learned once, back in the day," he said good naturedly. "You use soap, water."

"Yes, but you always somehow manage to get water all over the counter," she retorted, smiling. "We're less likely to drown if I do them. But if you want, you can dry."

She threw a dish towel at him and turned on the tap. They made conversation while she washed and he dried, and the dishes were done quickly. Glancing down, she saw that the sponge in her hand looked just about spent. She tossed it in the trash and opened the cupboard under the sink to grab a new one, but didn't see any.

"Hey, do you know where all of the extra sponges are?" she asked, straightening back up. "You had a bunch last week."

"Yes," he said, and the sudden agitation in his voice caught her off guard. "I think the neighbor took them."

She slowly wiped her hands on the dish towel, looking at him questioningly. The sudden mood swings still took her by surprise; one second he could be cheerful and clear headed, and the next it was like a storm cloud had descended on him.

"The neighbor took them?" she asked doubtfully.

"The new one. I don't like that her," he said. "The blonde woman next door with the pink bike and the German Shepherd."

"Mrs. Matheson?" Sarah asked, confused.

"I don't know her name! When did she move in?"

"She…she's always been there, Dad. She's lived there since before we have. She used to babysit me. Remember?"

"No. I think she's been hiding some of my things. Not just the sponges. My crossword book is gone, and so are a pair of my nice dress shoes. And I know it was her," he said. The hard lines of suspicion and paranoia on his normally open face made him look almost unrecognizable to Sarah. Her heart twisted as she tried to calmly reassure him of the reality of the situation.

"Dad…I don't think she's hiding your things. She—she doesn't have any reason to, and she doesn't even have a key to your place," Sarah said gently. "She's a very nice woman. We've been friends with her for a long time."

The suspicion on his face slowly gave way to uncertainty. "My things are missing, Sarah. Someone— _someone_ is hiding them…when I'm not looking."

"You probably just misplaced them. I'll look for them, okay? We'll find them. A crossword book and your dress shoes, right? And the extra sponges."

He nodded, but his brow crinkled in confusion. "Yes. Yes, I think so."

Sarah looked at him closely. The lost look on his face wrenched her chest. She touched his arm gently. "Why don't you go sit back down? I'll see if we have any cookies for dessert. Don't need plates for those, right?"

He nodded absently and wandered back over to the table. She quickly found a package of Oreos in the cupboard and brought them over to the table, where he had the sections of a few newspaper spread out in front of them. His agitation from a moment earlier seemed to have been forgotten.

"Lots of articles about that masked man who keeps running around your neighborhood, if you want to read them," he said, gesturing to a few papers before grabbing the brightly colored comics section. "Half of them say he's a savior, the other half say he's a menace. Me, I don't know what to think about him, so I figure I'll just read the comics."

"Yeah, I don't know what to think of him either," Sarah said softly, looking down at the two different newspapers he was indicating.

One had a small article about Daredevil saving a group of children from being sold into a human trafficking ring. The article was littered with quotes from locals swearing up and down that the man was a hero. Accompanying the text was a picture of one of the children, a small boy with huge blue eyes staring straight into the camera and grinning widely, even as he clasped a police blanket around his small shoulders. Unharmed, alive, reunited with his family.

The second article had a blurry photo of Daredevil on a security camera, leaving a warehouse where several high profile criminals had been found beaten and tied. The article argued that allowing anyone to operate outside of the law was dangerous, that eventually the vigilante would make a mistake and end up hurting or killing someone who had committed no crime, or who had simply run into him on an off night. The article was a bit sensationalist, but made some solid points. Daredevil was dangerous, and no one could predict what he would do, whether for better or worse.

Sarah sighed, staring at the blue-eyed boy in the newspaper photo for a long time. Thinking about what would have happened to him and those other children if not for the terrifying, confusing, unpredictable Matt Murdock.

Matt hadn't killed her, and he easily could have. He hadn't hurt her that night that he had come to Orion. He had known exactly where she was hiding; he could have easily hauled her out from under the desk and bounced her off the walls to see what she knew, broken some of her bones like he did Ronan and Yates. But he hadn't. When he found out that she knew his identity, he could have kept her quiet by bashing her head against the alleyway wall and leaving her for dead, or snapping her neck in her kitchen on multiple occasions. But…he hadn't.

He'd made it painfully clear that he wouldn't hesitate to hurt her, and the few times he had put his hands on her had left no doubt in her mind that he was capable of much greater violence. But she was still alive, and for the most part unharmed.

She bit her lip, looking at her father as he shuffled through the sections of the newspaper. Wasn't he worth it? Wasn't it worth it to keep him safe and trying to find a way for them to get out from under the thumb of Fisk and his successor? Wasn't that worth the risk that she might end up hurt, or dead, or something else entirely—whatever a person becomes when they find themselves burdened with the weight of taking a life?

When he had been diagnosed last year— _"Early Onset Alzheimer's," the doctor had said clinically. "It can hit people as early as their forties. Millions of Americans have it," he had said, as though that made it any better_ —she had assumed she would move in with him to take care of him, or at least hire a nurse. But then she had been pulled into this whole mess with Fisk, and she knew she couldn't put him at risk if her work ended up following her home. She didn't even want to risk him finding out that she was working there, that she was no longer following her dreams like she once had. And with half of her paycheck going towards his debts there was no way they could afford a nurse. His insurance barely covered his medication as it was.

Mitch snorted as he read a Marmaduke comic. He always snorted when he laughed, and he was the only person she knew who found a cartoon dog so funny. Sarah felt a small, pained smile tug at her lips as she watched him.

Another week. She'd stick it out another week, give Matt the benefit of the doubt about Brian Yates. Maybe look into the possibility that someone at Orion really had killed him. She had no proof that Matt didn't kill him, but she also had no proof that he did, and her heart was desperate to believe that someone else was at fault, someone unconnected to her. At the end of the week, she would make her decision. And hope to God that she didn't end up regretting the wait.

She glanced at her father again, and this time he was watching her, too.

"You look tired, Sarah," he said concernedly. "Are you getting enough rest?"

Sarah sighed. "Yeah, Dad. I'm fine. I just…haven't been sleeping much lately."

"Why not?"

"Um, you know. Hell's Kitchen. It's a loud place. Lots of noises. Seems like there's something annoying that keeps bothering me at night." Her mind flashed to the masked man lingering on her fire escape the night before. "Kind of unavoidable, I guess."

"Well, why don't you sleep here tonight? It's quiet. No construction or anything. And your old room is always ready for you."

Sarah considered it for a moment. She hadn't brought a change of clothes, but she still had some old pajamas here, and she could always get up early so she'd have time to go home and get ready before work. She grimaced at the idea of a long cab or subway ride tonight, followed by an even longer night of anxiously looking out for surprise visitors.

"Yeah, actually. I think I will do that."

After she had gotten ready for bed and said goodnight to her father (and quietly fished the extra car key out of the junk drawer and pocketed it), she pulled out her phone to set her alarm for an earlier time than usual. She was tempted to not set an alarm at all, to just not show up to work the next day. Or the day after that, or the one after that. Just stay in her childhood bedroom forever, not thinking about dead coworkers and intimidating, morally ambiguous masked men. She pressed her palms to her eyes, willing herself to stop thinking about all of it, and let the day's exhaustion whisk her away into sleep.

~*~

The next morning, Sarah groaned as the alarm on her phone went off. Her back ached slightly from the uncomfortable mattress— _Was it always this uncomfortable, or am I officially old now?_ —and her brain protested the extra early hour at which she was attempting to rouse it. She pawed at the screen with her eyes still closed, finally managing to turn the alarm off. When she finally opened her eyes and glanced at the screen, her stomach dropped.

She had two missed calls from Matt. One at 11:13 pm, and another at 1:40 am. She must have been so tired that she slept right through both calls. He had probably stopped by her place last night to follow up on their phone call and seen that she wasn't there. She wondered how he had reacted to that.

Sarah frowned, dismissing the missed call notification from the screen. She knew he had probably wanted to talk about Brian Yates, but she didn't want to think about him yet. Even though she had gradually—and begrudgingly—come to accept that it didn't quite make sense for Matt to have been the one that killed him, she still didn't feel like discussing it with until she absolutely had to. And anyway, she was a grown woman, and adults had the right to decide when they wanted a night off from being a vigilante's secret informant.

She slipped back into her wrinkled clothes from the day before, and was just grabbing her purse to leave when she heard her father's bedroom door open. Mitch wandered out, wearing pajama pants and an old blue sweatshirt that she had gotten him for his birthday a long time ago. His expression was clear and alert, not clouded by uncertainty, and she smiled at the sight.

"Early morning, huh?" he said.

"Yep. Gotta go get ready for work. Oh! I forgot to give you these last night." She rummaged in her large purse and pulled out two worn paperbacks, holding them out to him. "I got you a couple of books from that used book store on 111th. All of their old paperbacks are a dollar right now. These ones are by, umm—" she glanced at the cover, "—Richard Bachmann. I'm pretty sure that's an early penname for Stephen King. I know you already have most of his books, but you don't have his really early stuff, right? I can never remember."

"Well, you are getting on in your years," Mitch said, smiling slightly and reaching up to tap her temple. "Your memory's starting to fail."

She laughed softly at his joke even as she swallowed the lump in her throat.

"There's a smile. You're so serious these days, Sarah. Have a laugh occasionally. Even at your old man's expense, huh?" He smiled widely, his eyes clear of confusion and crinkling at the corners. For a moment he was the same person she remembered from years ago. "You are young, and beautiful, and already more successful than I ever was. You've got your head on straight. Life isn't that bad."

Sarah returned his smile, but she knew it didn't reach her eyes like his did. She leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. "Bye, Dad. I'll call and let you know how the ticket thing goes with the police, okay? No more driving."

"You got it, baby girl. Thanks for the books. Have a good day at work."

_Unlikely_ , she thought to herself as she began making her way to the subway stop.


	6. Faith

### Chapter Six: Faith

The workday passed as slowly and unpleasantly as the last. About an hour before the end of Sarah's shift, Ronan's shadow fell over her desk and she looked up in time to see him drop a large cardboard box of assorted objects onto her desk. She looked at him blankly, waiting for an explanation.

"Yates' belongings," he said in a bored tone. "No need for them anymore. I'd say just get rid of them, but apparently we have to keep it for forty-eight hours to give his family a chance to pick it up."

Sarah glanced down at the box. There wasn't much in it. A couple of folders, a few knick knacks, a water bottle, some loose papers.

"Will they be coming by soon?" she asked him.

Ronan shrugged. "No clue. Who knows if he even has a family? Who cares? Just keep it behind your desk for the next two days and then toss it."

She nodded, but he didn't leave her desk. Instead he lingered, staring from his watch to her with a smirk on his face, until she raised her eyebrows at him.

"Just wondering if they teach you to tell time in secretary school," he said.

"I…don't know if secretary school is a thing anymore," she responded.

"Well, wherever you learned your definition of 'lunch break' then."

Her face flushed. "Oh. I, um…I didn't feel well yesterday."

"Upset about your dead boyfriend?" he asked mockingly.

"My…what?"

"Well I can't think of any other reason you'd get that upset and rush out of here after the news spread. Unless you two were, uh, engaging in some off-the-clock teamwork," he said, baring his yellow teeth in a leer. She narrowed her eyes when she caught what he was suggesting.

He leaned a little closer and said lowly, "You know, if you were going to give it up to someone in the office, you probably should have shot a bit higher than Yates. You didn't even get a promotion out of him before he kicked the bucket."

Sarah stared at him, gritting her teeth in an effort not to respond. She knew he was just trying to get a rise out of her, but something in his expression disturbed her deeply, more so than usual, and she had no desire to push farther. Ronan kept his beady eyes glued on her for a long, unsettling moment before returning to his office.

After he was gone, Sarah took a few deep breaths and stared down at the box. If someone at the company did kill Yates, maybe there would be some clue in there. She doubted that they would have left anything incriminating in there, but there might be something they missed. But the lobby during the middle of the business day wasn't the best place to be rummaging around in a dead man's things. She supposed she could figure out a plan with her frequent nightly visitor—who she was positive would be dropping by tonight, seeing as she hadn't been there the night before. And she was sure he would not be in a good mood.

As she had expected, a knock came at her window around 11:30 that night. Her stomach flipped in anxiety; just how pissed would he be that she had disappeared for a night after basically accusing him of murder? On top of that, how much angrier would he get when she wouldn't tell him where she had been?

She heaved the window up and squinted out into the darkness. Even by his outline she could tell he was tense. Matt slipped in silently while she returned to where she had been sitting at her small kitchen table. He remained standing by the window, just outside of the glow cast by her kitchen light.

"You weren't here last night," he said.

"No," she acknowledged nervously. He waited for her to elaborate, but she didn't.

"You know, it's not…a _great_ feeling to have someone call you on the phone and hysterically accuse you of killing someone, and then suddenly become completely unreachable."

Sarah looked down at the table, nervously tracing patterns on the surface with her index finger. "I just...needed some time to think. I told you I wasn't going to talk to anyone."

He laughed harshly, and she winced at the sound. "Yeah. You sounded really convincing, too. Besides, you ratting me out wasn't the only possibility going through my head when I couldn't get in touch with you."

She looked up at him, confused as to what he meant, but he didn't appear to notice. Which would seem normal for any other blind man, but this one was usually inexplicably observant.

"Where did you go?" he asked.

"Not to the police."

"I figured as much, what with me not being dead or in handcuffs. That's not what I asked."

"Does it matter?" she said evasively. "I just…spent the night somewhere else. I needed time to think."

"And…what conclusion did you come to? After all this thinking?"

Sarah bit her lip. "I let you in, didn't I? I guess it…it doesn't make a lot of sense. For you to have killed Yates."

"A ringing endorsement," he said dryly.

"You interrogated a man in his apartment and he was found dead the next day, Matt. What…what did you think it would look like? But I'm not—I'm not breaking my end of the deal. I swear."

"So you never considered going to the police?"

She looked away. Of course she had thought about it. She had dismissed the thought pretty quickly, but it's not like it hadn't crossed her mind. Somehow she didn't think that would go over well, though.

"No," she lied. Her heart pounded as she waited to see if he would catch on somehow, in that way he often did. Instead, he was silent for a long time before he finally spoke.

"Do you have anything new for me?" he asked. Sarah was relieved at the change of subject.

"Yeah, um…maybe. Ronan gave me a box of Yates' stuff that they cleared out of his office. It has some old papers and notebooks and stuff. I'm sure they probably removed anything incriminating, but I figure it's worth a look."

He nodded. "Do you have the box here?"

"No. I have to keep it at work for forty-eight hours in case his family comes to claim it. And I couldn't get a good look with so many people around. Um, if we don't mind waiting a couple of days, I can just wait until the time limit is up and toss it, then we can go back and get it out of the dumpster."

"And if we want it sooner than that?"

"I…can pretend like I left something at work and go back to get it. I mean, I can't get the whole box out the door with the security cameras, but the folders and papers would fit in my purse."

"No," he said immediately. She blinked in surprise. "We'll wait til the forty eight hours are up."

"Are you sure? I've gone back to work after hours before…which I guess you probably remember," she said awkwardly. "I don't think it would draw a lot of suspicion."

He shook his head. "Too dangerous. Someone might catch on. And if someone does come to claim that box, we don't need them figuring out that some of the contents are missing. We'll wait."

She raised an eyebrow. She hadn't realized he had even considered the danger on her end of their bargain. Sarah blinked as she realized what he might have meant when he mentioned another possibility behind her being missing.

He shifted oddly, leaning slightly against the wall, and as the kitchen light hit him a bit more Sarah noticed that he was swaying slightly where he stood. Peering at him closer, she saw that the sleeve on his right arm was torn, revealing a long, deep cut down his bicep, and his lip was bleeding. She frowned and hesitated, unsure where the line was drawn when it came to asking about what he did when he wasn't climbing through her kitchen window.

"Um…are you…are you alright?" she asked uncertainly.

"What?" He seemed confused by her sudden change of subject.

"You look, um…injured," she said, gesturing vaguely at his injuries, although she knew he couldn't see the movement.

He shrugged. "It's nothing. Found a few guys who had cornered a—a teenage girl in a parking lot. A couple of them were…surprisingly quick with the switchblades," he said, gesturing to his bleeding arm.

She winced. "Is the girl okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, she'll be fine. They pushed her around a bit, but they didn't…" he trailed off and Sarah could see his fists clench and unclench. "She'll be alright," he finished firmly.

Sarah fidgeted uncomfortably. She didn't exactly want to send out friendly vibes, but she couldn't very well let him stand there, bleeding from various wounds after saving some poor girl, and not offer him any sort of help.

"Do you, um…" she trailed off, and he tilted his head back, waiting. "Do you need like, a—a bandage, or…ice or something?"

Her question seemed to confuse him again. Was it that weird of her to ask a bleeding person if they needed some medical assistance? _I did recently accuse him of killing someone,_ she admitted mentally. _Maybe it is weird._

He started to answer, then turned his head towards her open window suddenly. It almost looked like he was staring outside, but obviously he couldn't be.

"What—what are you doing?" she asked, wrinkling her brow in confusion.

He didn't answer. Was he hearing something out there? Sarah strained her ears, but she couldn't hear anything beyond the usual traffic below.

"I need to go," he said, already pulling himself through the window. Sarah raised her eyebrows, baffled by his sudden exit. He landed on the fire escape and turned back to her for a second. "I'll check in soon. Just don't…don't disappear again. This works better when I can keep in touch with you."

He vaulted off the metal scaffolding, and Sarah leaned back in her chair, relieved at how not-violent the night had gone. They seemed to have almost reached a kind of truce. Sarah paused after the thought, then quickly knocked on the wooden table. No need to tempt any jinxes.

Unfortunately, knocking on wood doesn't always work, and the fragile détente between the two of them was to be short lived. In fact, it would be blown all to hell by the next night.

The next day after work, Sarah hailed a cab instead of walking to the subway stop. She had promised her father she'd go to the police station about his ticket. She assumed it was a long shot, but it wasn't unheard of for police to give the court a recommendation for dismissal or leniency if someone presented a good case. She had no idea what that good case could be in this situation, but it was worth a shot.

As it worked out, rush hour traffic ensured that her cab ride to the police station took just as long as the subway would have—at about three times the price—and by the time she arrived the sun was already getting low. Entering the lobby of the police station, she got in line behind two other people and fiddled with the traffic ticket in her hands.

Sarah zoned out, and she almost didn't notice when the doors leading to the interrogation rooms opened and three men walked through, conversing quietly. A dark skinned officer in uniform, a man in a suit with shaggy blonde hair, and lastly, a familiar dark haired blind man.

_Shit._ Sarah realized immediately what the situation would look like to him, but it was too late. For about half a second she hoped that he might not know she was there, but he stopped dead as soon as he came through the doors, turning his sightless gaze in her direction. She didn't know how he knew she was there, but there was no doubt that he did.

"Ma'am?" the desk sergeant behind the counter said. "What did you need?"

Sarah hadn't even realized that the two people in front of her in line had already gone, and she was next.

"What?" she said too quickly. "I—um—n-nothing. I don't remember. Bye."

The office raised her eyebrows doubtfully as Sarah hastily shoved the papers back in her purse and made a beeline for the door. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw that Matt still had his head tilted just slightly in her direction; the officer speaking to him looked confused by his sudden stillness. She could see the vigilante's knuckles turning white as he gripped his cane harder.

Bolting through the doors, she began walking as fast as she could without flat out running. She figured once she was a few blocks away, she could maybe call him and leave a message explaining that she wasn't there about him, and just pray that he believed her and didn't show up at her apartment.

Sarah had just gotten to the intersection when she felt a strong hand grab her upper arm, forcing her to a stop. She knew who it was before she even looked. Turning her head, she saw Matt standing next to her, facing straight ahead. Considering how fast he must have moved to catch up with her speed walking without her noticing, he was remarkably not out of breath.

"I think we should talk, don't you?" he said, speaking lowly so only she could hear him.

"Matt—" she began, but he cut her off.

"You're going to act like you're helping me cross the street, and then we'll find a place to discuss some of the terms of our agreement," he said. His voice was deadly calm, but his vice-like grip told a different story. Any trace of the almost-truce they had come to the previous night was long gone.

Sarah glanced around at the few other people nearby. No one seemed to notice anything off about the situation; to them, she realized, they just looked like a blind man holding onto a friend's arm at a crosswalk. She felt a low hum of panic begin to build in her chest.

"N-no, we don't have to—you don't understand—" She hissed in pain as his grip on her arm tightened suddenly and painfully.

"I think maybe _you_ don't understand. Let me rephrase," he said quietly. "You're going to do as I say and cross the street, or I'm going to break your arm. Is that clearer?"

The crosswalk turned green and began beeping, and he nudged her arm forward. His tight grip on her arm didn't lessen as they crossed. When they reached the other side, he began steering her to the right, though she knew to any potential onlookers it probably still looked like she was leading him. She quickly realized what he was pushing her towards, and her stomach dropped in dread as they approached the opening to a very dark and out-of-sight alleyway. Sure enough, he turned sharply when they came to it, and yanked her a few yards further until they reached a large dumpster. They rounded the side of the dumpster, which effectively blocked them from view of the street, and he let go of her arm roughly, so that she stumbled back against the metal container.

Matt was breathing heavily, and even with his sunglasses instead of the mask, she instantly recognized the look on his face. It was the same one he had gotten when she accidentally revealed his friend's nickname, right before he had lost it and pinned her to the wall. Sarah nervously glanced around her. Almost all of the windows in the building behind him were boarded up, and the alley ended in a brick wall. She eyed the windowsill to her right, which was also boarded up; there was an empty beer bottle within arms reach.

"You know, if you were going to try and turn me in without me catching you, it might have been a smarter move to go to a police station _not_ in Hell's Kitchen," he said, his voice shaking slightly.

"Okay, w-wait. I know what you're thinking—"

"I'm thinking that you just broke your part in our agreement, Sarah, less than twenty four hours after you _swore_ you wouldn't, so give me one good reason why I shouldn't do the same."

She paled at his words. Most of his end of the deal consisted of him not throwing her off a roof, and right now it looked like he meant it when he said he wouldn't be holding up that end anymore.

"I wasn't there about anything to do with you. I swear. I wasn't going to—"

"We'll get to what you were going to do in a minute. What I need to know right now is what you've already done. If the police station wasn't your first stop then my friends are in danger, meaning you have about ten seconds to tell me the truth. Have you already told someone?"

"No. No, I—I haven't. A-and I wasn't going to in there, either."

"Then why were you there?"

Sarah hesitated, holding her purse closer as her mind flashed to the traffic ticket she had shoved inside. The ticket with her father's full name and address on it. She knew he couldn't read the actual physical paper, but he was a lawyer; who knew if he could look up tickets in the system somehow, and figure out the connection between her last name and her father's? If she had her way, Matt would never even know she had a father. Or any family or friends, for that matter. In a perfect scenario, he would believe that she had simply popped into existence and lived her life in a vacuum, with nobody that he could track down if their partnership went downhill. Which it looked like it was about to do. Rapidly.

"You know, when someone takes this long to answer, it's not usually a good indicator that they're about to tell you the truth," he said coldly.

"It…it was for…personal reasons," she said lamely. Her mind was blanking on any possible excuses she could come up with.

"Personal reasons?" he repeated. She could hear the disbelief in his tone. "This is my _life_ you're messing with. The lives of people I love. You can at least come up with a better lie than _personal reasons_."

"It's not a lie! I just, I can't—I can't tell you. Why I was there. B-but it had nothing to do with you, I swear."

"Really. If it had nothing to do with me, why can't you tell me what it was?"

"I just—you don't need to know," she said, trying to sound firm, but even she could hear the tremble in her voice. "It's not relevant. T-to anything that we're doing."

"So you're telling me," he said slowly, his voice heavy with skepticism, "that your mysterious reason for being in the police station has nothing to do with me? Nothing to do with Orion, or why you're working there? No connection to…any of that at all?"

_Except that I was there for the one person who got me involved in any of this in the first place._

"R-right," Sarah lied, tightening her grip on her purse. "No connection."

He nodded slowly, almost looking as if he believed her. The twitch in his jaw was her only warning sign that he didn't. She barely had time to recognize the red flag before he slammed his hands against the metal dumpster on either side of her with a deafening bang. Sarah let out a small yelp, flinching at the sound of the impact so close to her face. Her hands automatically flew up in front of her defensively, but he had already turned away and was pacing the small area next to the dumpster in agitation.

Sarah nervously glanced yet again at the empty beer bottle on the windowsill, then back at Matt, whose broad shoulders rose and fell as he breathed deeply to get himself under control. If she had ever thought that the man was less intimidating in normal clothes than in his Daredevil outfit, that thought was gone now; she could see no difference between the two.

"Last night, I asked you if you had considered going to the police," he said, still pacing. "You lied to me and said no. And now you're lying again."

"I'm not lying—" she protested, but he cut her off.

"Then why is your heartbeat so fast?"

"Because I'm scared, why else—" she stopped abruptly as his words sunk in, staring at him in with mounting alarm. "What…what do you mean, my heartbeat?" she said slowly.

He stopped pacing and turned back to her. For a few moments it didn't look like he was going to say anything, so she was surprised when he answered her. "Your heartbeat. I can hear it. And it's making it very obvious that you're not telling me the truth right now."

She tried to steady her breathing, suddenly very aware of the sound of her heart pounding. But that was in her own ears; there was no way he could hear it.

"That's…n-not possible," she stuttered uncertainly.

Matt cocked his head. "Are you sure about that?"

He took a slow, deliberate step towards her, and sure enough, she felt her heart rate jump as he came closer. He raised his eyebrows pointedly.

"There it goes," he said softly, and her eyes widened. "Clear as day. It changes when you're lying. And when you're scared. And it's not just your heartbeat. Your breathing is erratic, your mouth is dry. Even your blood pressure is higher. Your muscles are tense, like maybe you're thinking about trying to run. Your palms are sweaty; not a lot, but enough that if you actually reach for that bottle you keep glancing at, you'd probably drop it before it can do you any good." He shrugged. "But you can try if you want. I wouldn't recommend it."

Sarah's heart pounded faster with every word he said, and the new knowledge that he could hear it didn't help. She looked from the bottle to him, then shook her head, unable to speak. He continued.

"You have pepper spray attached to your keys, but unfortunately for you those are at the bottom of your bag, and you forgot to pack your stun gun," he stated calmly. "All of the apartments with windows facing us are abandoned. And the only people to pass this alleyway in the last five minutes are already at the end of the block. Well out of earshot. Do you want to hear more?"

A tense silence lingered in the air between them, only now Sarah was painfully aware that to him, it wasn't really silence at all.

"No," she whispered. "I—I think I got it."

"Then let's try this again," he said, taking another slow step towards her until he was less than a foot away, and she had to tilt her head back to look up at him. "What were you going to talk to the police about?"

"I…I can't tell you," she repeated shakily. She kept her eyes trained over his shoulder, trying not to look at him so she wouldn't have to see his reaction.

"Does it have anything to do with that paper in your bag that you don't want me to see?"

Her eyes snapped to his face, which was carefully void of expression. Her stomach twisted. If he could hear a person's heartbeat and blood pressure, of all things, then he could almost definitely read the information on that ticket if she gave it to him.

"You shoved it in your bag as soon as you saw me," he continued when she didn't answer. "And unless you think I'm after your wallet I can't think of any reason why you'd be holding onto your purse so tightly."

"No, I...the paper has n-nothing to do with you or our arrangement. And I'm not giving it to you," she said in a small voice. She held her breath and waited.

Matt leaned forward, slowly placing his hands against the dumpster on either side of her, close to where he had just struck it a few minutes earlier.

"Do you really think I can't just take it from you?" he asked quietly. Sarah clutched her bag tighter.

"I believe you when you say you didn't kill Brian Yates," she said softly. Even behind his dark glasses, she could see him blink in confusion at the sudden conversational shift, and she hurried to continue. "I don't have proof, b-but I choose to believe you anyway, because I have to. Because I have to work with you to get what I want, and—and you're in that same position."

He was very still. Not removing the arms he was using to block her in, but not bashing her head against the dumpster either, so she took that as a sign to continue.

"You can listen to my pulse, or—or whatever you do," she said. "I'm telling you the _truth._ I wasn't there to turn you in. Maybe the reason why I was there isn't—isn't _completely_ separate from all this. But i-it's not going to affect anything. Please, just…believe me."

The silence after her words seemed to stretch on forever.

Matt pressed his lips together, apparently assessing her before he finally took a step back, removing his hands from their position on the dumpster. Sarah breathed a small sigh of relief that he was no longer trapping her in.

"You accuse me of _killing_ someone, then hang up and mysteriously disappear for a night," he said. "And now you want me to just…take your word that you were in the police station the very next day for some completely unrelated reason? But you can't tell me what? I'm just supposed to accept that on faith?"

"W-well I have to take it on faith that you're won't decide to just up and kill me after I help you take down Orion," Sarah said as steadily as she could manage. "Or even sooner. And—and that's not helped by the fact that you spend half your time threatening me in every _freaking_ alleyway in Hell's Kitchen."

Something that she could have sworn resembled guilt flashed across his face, but it was gone before she could be sure.

"So we're just going on faith, then," he said finally, and she was unsure if it was a question or a statement.

"I guess so," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. He didn't say anything else for several minutes, and finally she ventured uncertainly, "Are…are you going to stop me if I try to leave now?"

Matt considered her for a moment, then jerked his head towards the road. She cautiously skirted around the vigilante, keeping her eyes on him until she was past him.

Sarah hurried out of the alleyway, glancing back when she got to the sidewalk. She could barely see his outline in the shadows beyond the dumpster. When she got to the end of the block she pulled out her phone. She was supposed to have dinner with her dad on Friday night, but suddenly the idea of going there at night—when Daredevil could be prowling about at any time—seemed like a bad one. Daylight hours would surely be a safer bet. He did supposedly have a day job that he had to be at, didn't he?

Once she was confident that she was safely out of earshot of the vigilante, she hit the call button. The phone rang a few times and then went to the generic answering machine. She made a mental note to have him record a real voicemail at some point.

The machine beeped, and she couldn't even muster the energy to sound cheerful as she left him a message.

"Hey, um, I didn't, uh…didn't get a chance to stop by the police station today. I'll do it soon, though. I know that I said I'd come by on Friday night, but I was thinking Saturday would work better instead. Maybe around one? Just, um…give me a call back, and let me know if that works for you. Bye."

Sarah hung up just as she neared the subway station. She fished in her purse for her Metro card and her hand brushed against the traffic ticket that had caused so much trouble. She scowled at it. She wasn't sure which had been the dumber mistake: going to the police station without even considering that Matt—a _defense lawyer_ , for God's sake—might be there, or freaking out and leaving the police station, which had made her look even guiltier.

Unfortunately, in a long list of mistakes Sarah had made that day, the last—and possibly biggest—one had been assuming that two blocks from Matt was far enough to be out of earshot. But she had underestimated how far the vigilante's enhanced hearing could reach, and the words of her voicemail floated back to him like she was merely feet away. As Matt listened to her detailing what time she'd be meeting with the person who had sent her to the police station, he decided that maybe Daredevil could make a rare daytime appearance to find out exactly where she was going, where she was hiding all of these secrets. No one would see him up on the rooftops, anyway.

Matt didn't visit Sarah—as Daredevil or as himself—either Wednesday night or Thursday night, and his absence calmed her nerves slightly as she got in the cab to go to her father's on Friday afternoon. She had stopped by Ronan's office that morning to let him know she'd be leaving early, but he was preoccupied with mysterious phone calls all day, and she had been pleasantly surprised when he merely waved her away with an exasperated hand. She had been certain that her 'long lunch' on Tuesday would jeopardize her chances of getting to leave early.

As soon as Sarah stepped foot in her father's apartment Friday afternoon, she knew he was having a very bad day.

Entire sections of the day's newspaper were in shreds on the coffee table, and large, discolored blank areas spotted the wall where several pictures had been taken down. She spotted them neatly stacked in the corner, face down.

"Hey, Dad," she greeted him hesitantly, looking around the apartment. "What's, uh…what's with the redecorating?"

"I don't like all those pictures," he muttered as he shuffled into the kitchen. "So many people in them, it's—it's cluttered."

Sarah gently picked up the picture laying on the top of the stack. Turning it over, she saw that it was an old photo of her and her parents when she was a baby. She furrowed her brow at the picture before carefully setting it back down and following her father into the kitchen. She glanced at the stack of dishes around the sink. Mitch followed her gaze to the sink.

"The sink is broken," he explained. "It keeps filling up on me when I'm trying to do the dishes. I tried looking at the pipes, but it hurts my back. And I tried buying some of that, uh…" He snapped his fingers, trying to remember the word.

"Draino?"

"Yes! Draino. But it didn't work."

She walked over to the sink and turned the faucet on experimentally. The sink started filling up within seconds. Secretly she felt a tiny sense of relief that the sink actually was broken, and that his disoriented brain wasn't just making up reasons why he hadn't been doing the dishes.

"Well, I can try taking a look, if you want? I don't really know anything about plumbing, but I probably can't make it any worse. I think," she added doubtfully. Mostly she just knew they couldn't afford a plumber.

Sarah opened the cabinet doors under the sink and reached in to grab the toolbox her dad kept under there. She accidentally banged her upper arm on the low hanging partition in the middle and hissed in pain, rubbing her arm where Matt's harsh grip earlier that week had left a sizeable bruise.

"You okay, honey?"

"Yeah, yeah. I just…banged my arm on something a few days ago. It's fine."

Sarah settled cross-legged in front of the sink, and gazed contemplatively at the network of pipes under the sink. She didn't see anything dripping or leaking, which was about the extent of her knowledge on things that could make sinks break. She knew enough to turn the small knob in the back to cut off water supply to the pipes; beyond that she was lost.

"You're always a good sport about helping around the house," her dad said. "Very considerate. I was just saying that about you earlier today."

"Yeah? Who were you talking to?" she asked distractedly. Mitch often got confused about when certain conversations had happened. To him, 'earlier today' could actually have been days or weeks ago, if the conversation had happened at all.

"Some men that came by earlier. I don't, ah…don't remember their names. They asked all about my life. They were very nice. Had nice suits on."

Sarah looked up, alarmed. "What men?"

The paranoid corner of her mind kicked into overdrive. Men in suits? Fisk's debt collectors shouldn't be coming here, not anymore. Matt wore a suit when he was being a lawyer, but if he had somehow found out about her father she was pretty sure he wouldn't show up in his daytime attire.

"I…uh…what do you call them? They, they knock on everyone's doors…don't celebrate birthdays."

She felt a rush of relief. "Jehovah's Witnesses?"

"Yes! Those ones. Two of them. I don't think they had high hopes for me, but they came in and gave it their best shot anyway."

Sarah released a shaky laugh. Jehovah's Witnesses. Of course. How bad of a week had she had that her mind immediately turned to criminals and vigilantes as her first guess?

"Well, did it work? Are you a Jehovah now?"

Mitch chuckled, and Sarah grinned at the sound, turning her attention back to the pipes under the sink. At least he still sounded like himself when he laughed. She took the wrench in her hand and whapped it against a few pipes experimentally. They all made a hollow noise except for one, which made a dull clunking noise.

_Guess I'll look there_ , she decided, sticking her head under the sink to get a better look at the offending pipe. _Weird noises seem like something a plumber would look for, right?_

"I think it's a little late in life for me to find religion," Mitch said. His voice sounded muffled from her position under the pipes. "They gave me a free Bible. Don't know what I'm supposed to do with it, but you can never have too many books, I guess,"

She shook her head, still smiling. "You didn't feel that way when you had to help me move a dozen boxes of books out of my dorm room and into my apartment when I first moved in, remember?"

He didn't answer, and she looked up. The smile slipped from her face when she saw the sad, distant look on his face. Clearly, he didn't remember.

"Hey!" she said, adopting a more upbeat tone. "Can you pass me like a butter knife or a letter opener or something? I think there's something stuck in this pipe."

"Sure, I have an old letter opener in the desk."

She waited patiently while her father shuffled around in the living room, then she heard him huff in frustration.

"What's wrong?" she called into the other room.

"Well, while I was in here I thought I—I'd try to find this ticket. I got it a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted to see if you could talk to the police and help me get it taken care of, but I just…don't know where I put it," he said, coming back into the room and handing her the letter opener. _At least he remembered what he went into the living room for,_ she thought.

She leaned back against the open cabinet door. "You mean the ticket you got for driving without a license?" she asked, trying to keep the disapproval out of her voice. "You already gave it to me."

He looked at her for a long moment. "I did, didn't I? You already took care of it?"

Sarah grimaced guiltily. Her first visit to the police station had ended so badly that she hadn't gone back yet.

"Um, I…didn't get a chance. I mentioned that in my message, I think. I went to the police station to see about getting a recommendation for a dismissal but, um, I got sidetracked doing…doing something else. I'll—I'll get it done sometime this week, though. I promise."

She stuck the letter opener into the open pipe and wiggled it around. Something wet, grey, and lumpy splattered out, and she squinted at it. It looked like wet paper, and she could barely make out tiny boxes with handwritten letters in them. It looked like pages from her dad's crossword book.

Sarah pursed her lips and looked up at him, debating whether it would be worth it to ask him why he had been shoving the pages of his book down the drain. If he even knew why. The vacant stare on his face as he looked out the window told her that she probably wouldn't get an answer. Not today, at least. Maybe on a better, clearer day.

"I'm going to hit the little boy's room," he said, and she nodded.

Once she had put the pipe back together, Sarah wiped her hands on the dish towel and cautiously turned on the faucet. The water swirled down the drain easily. She grinned at her small success and wandered out to the living room. When she came to her father's desk, she glanced down at the Bible sitting there, and idly ran her fingers over the embossed cover. She frowned as she looked at the title.

_Holy Bible: King James Version._

Something needled at the back of her mind, a nagging feeling that something was wrong, but she didn't know what. For some reason, she thought of Daisy, a devout Jehovah's Witness from her old seventh grade math class who had always carried a Bible with her. Sarah remembered that she had been confused by the title of the other girl's Bible; it wasn't the kind she was familiar with, and the girl had explained to her that Jehovah's didn't use the same version as most other denominations. They used something else. _The New World Translation_ , Sarah recalled.

She stared down at the Bible on the table, a feeling of unease growing in her chest. Why would Jehovah's Witnesses have left her father with a version of the Bible that their denomination didn't use?

"Is that yours?" Her father's voice close behind her made her jump, and turned around to find him looking over her shoulder at the book on the table. "You religious now?"

"No, it's…it's yours. The Jehovah's Witnesses that came by earlier gave it to you, you said. Right?" Sarah tried to keep her voice steady.

He smiled at her vaguely and hummed, clearly not understanding what she was talking about.

"Do you—do you remember, Dad?" she pressed. "You said they came by and you talked to them…about me. Do you remember doing that?"

He looked from her to the Bible, frown lines forming on his face as he struggled to remember. "I…I don't think…I'm sorry," he said, shaking his head. He twisted his hands anxiously. "I'm very tired."

She sighed, reaching out to still his wringing hands. "I know. I'm—I'm sorry. I didn't mean to push. Just...just don't answer the door for any more men in suits, okay?" Her father continued giving her that same tired, anxious look. "Why don't you go sit in your recliner? I think there's a game on, maybe."

As Mitch settled himself into the old, brown recliner that he had owned for decades, Sarah flipped through the channels on his television, barely paying attention. She stopped when she got to something that looked vaguely sports-like, but she was too busy dwelling on the strange Bible on the desk to register who was playing what.

Turning to her father, she grinned weakly and handed him the remote. He smiled up at her as he took it, but there was something strangely empty about it.

"You know," he said, "you remind me a bit of my daughter."

The statement hit her hard, like she had been punched in the stomach. Of everything her father had forgotten, or been confused about, he had never not known who she was. Not once, not even for a moment. Not until now.

"I, um…I need some air," she said tightly, and Mitch smiled and nodded pleasantly, the way one would to a stranger or a guest. She hurried past him and slid open the door to his small balcony. She made sure to carefully close it all the way behind her, turning her back to the window and leaning over the side of the railing before she started crying.

She had known for a long time that these days would start happening; days when he would be so lost that he wouldn't even know who she was. But of all the days for it to happen for the first time, this had to have been the worst timing possible. A man had been murdered, and she didn't know why or by whom. The Devil of Hell's Kitchen—who apparently had all sorts of crazy super powers—had a habit of popping up unannounced and interrogating her in whatever dark alleyway was most convenient. Her arm was aching, and she had a headache that hadn't left her skull for days now. And even though she wasn't one hundred percent sure anything was off about the supposed Jehovah's Witnesses who had visited her father, something about the whole situation just seemed wrong.

She took a couple of deep breaths, trying not to go into full crying mode. When she starting crying—really, truly crying—she had no way of hiding it afterwards. Her face would get bright red, and her eyes would get bloodshot and not go back to normal for hours. She didn't want to alarm her father when she went back into the apartment, whether he recognized her by then or not.

As she struggled to get herself under control, she was unaware that two stories above her, on the roof of the building next door, Matt Murdock was listening closely, having heard their entire conversation from the time she walked in the door, and now fully aware of everything she had so desperately tried to keep secret.


	7. Aftermath

"Matthew. It's been a while since you've been here."

Matt turned his head towards Father Lantom, who was lingering in the aisle of the empty church, calmly observing the blind man sitting alone on one of the long pews.

"I know. I'm sorry, Father. I've…been busy."

"I assumed as much," Father Lantom said lightly. "Did you come for confession today?"

"Yes. Confession and…and counsel," Matt said.

The priest settled himself on the pew, a few feet from Matt. "Where would you like to begin?"

Matt was quiet for a moment, gathering his thoughts. "I met a girl."

Father Lantom looked at him in slight surprise, and Matt could hear a touch of amusement in his voice. "I have to say, after all of the…more troublesome sins you've come in here to confess, Matthew, impure thoughts isn't one that I expected you to be particularly concerned about."

"Not—not that kind of girl, Father," he said, laughing faintly before falling somber again. "We're not, um…on the best of terms. She works for some…bad people. The kind of people I—I dedicate all this time and effort to trying to bring down. She has her reasons, but she's there all the same. And she, uh, she knows. Who I am. What I do. Even who my friends are."

"How did that happen?" Father Lantom asked in a concerned tone.

Matt shook his head. "I wasn't careful enough."

"And what is it about the situation that's weighing on your mind?"

"The things she knows…they could put me in a lot of danger. If she told anyone. She could put the people I love in danger. Get them killed, or tortured. I've…done what I had to do. To keep her from telling those secrets. But I'm…struggling. With how I have to do it."

The priest was quiet, and while he contemplated, Matt listened to the creak of the old wooden pews and inhaled the comforting scent of incense and old missals.

"Have you…harmed this woman?"

Matt swallowed hard and tilted his face up towards the ceiling. He could feel the warmth of the sun on his face as it streamed through the stained glass windows high above him. He didn't know whether to lean into it or flinch away from it. Father Lantom was still waiting patiently for his answer.

"Yes. Not—not like I have others. But I've put my hands on her. I've made her afraid of me. What I've been doing to her…mentally…it's maybe just as harmful as physically hurting her."

The father's heartbeat was steady as always. No matter what sins Matt carried through the church doors and threw at this man's feet, his heart and breathing never changed. It was one of the reasons Matt always came back to him to confess.

"I know that with your…particular line of work, there's little use in debating the moral nuances of violence. But…you don't strike me as the type to hurt people for no reason, Matthew," Father Lantom said. There was a questioning note in his tone.

"I have reasons. This is—it's the only way I can have any control over the situation. The only way I can keep my friends safe."

"Has she given you some reason to believe that she'll tell your secrets?"

"Aside from the fact that she works for the people who would benefit most from finding out? That could destroy my life the quickest? I can't be there every hour of the day to make sure she doesn't break her promise. More than once now, I've thought that she did break it. And the feeling was just…like everything I've worked to protect was going to come crashing down. It's just this…constant uncertainty, not knowing what she'll do."

"You're a defense attorney by day, is that correct?"

Matt nodded, unsure where the father was going with the change of subject.

"When you get a client who wishes to have you represent them, I assume you must have to form an opinion of some sort as to whether or not they're innocent. How do you decide if they're lying to you?"

"It's…sort of a gut feeling," Matt said, guiltily sidestepping the full truth. "But determining if someone committed a single specific crime versus if they're someone who can be trusted indefinitely…it's two different things. It's—it's actions versus character. One is much harder to figure out than the other."

"I see. Well, let me ask you this. Did you come here today looking for reasons to trust this woman, or justification to continue keeping her in fear?"

"I don't know. Neither. I guess I'm here about…me. Everything that's happened in the past few months, I worry that it's made me…harder. Less forgiving. Sometimes I think that if this same situation had occurred before Fisk, before we lost Ben and Elena, before…a lot of things, maybe I would have reacted differently. Tried to be more…"

"Christian-like?" the father offered lightly.

"Yeah, that one," Matt said, a brief grin flashing across his face before falling. "The reason I do…everything that I've done is to help this city. To keep the people of Hell's Kitchen safe, so that they don't have to live in fear. But…I've done the opposite with her. It makes me wonder if it's the situation, or if I've changed."

"No one can go through such events and emerge unchanged, Matthew. But…it doesn't mean you've become a worse person for them. You say that you've made her afraid of you. Do you intend to follow through on the things you've threatened to do, if needed?"

"I don't know. I'd like to think that I wouldn't. But I also know that I—I can't risk trusting her right now. I can't stop putting pressure on her. Not when she works right in the center of the lion's den," Matt said bitterly.

"It's interesting that you use that analogy," Father Lantom said. "You are familiar with the story of Daniel and the lion's pit, are you not? King Darius was fooled into throwing his friend Daniel into a den of lions for refusing to pray to him before God. They rolled a stone in front of the entrance and left him there."

"Right," Matt said, nodding as he recalled that particular passage. "But when they came back the next day for his body, Daniel was unharmed."

"Exactly. Daniel went into the lion's den with complete faith that God would save him, and God rewarded that trust. In certain situations, there is no easy solution. We have no way out, we just have to have faith in God to keep us safe."

"I do have faith in God. I do. But…I've had my whole life to learn to trust Him. This girl, I've only just met."

"I understand that. Do what you need to, Matthew. I don't believe that you're as far gone as you think. Next time you have to make decision between trusting this girl or hurting her…try having faith in God. I think you'd be surprised at how much it will help you make your choice."

Matthew nodded, contemplating the older man's words.

"Thank you, Father," he said, standing and grabbing his cane to leave.

"I hope to see you again a bit sooner this time, Matthew," Father Lantom said. "Maybe over lattes."

Matt smiled slightly as he made his way up the aisle towards the large wooden doors. "I'll try my best, Father."

~*~*~*~

Sarah's Monday at Orion was tense. The forty-eight hours on the box of Yates' belongings had expired, and Sarah kept glancing at the container below her desk throughout the day, anxious to look inside it. She was tempted to just look through the stuff right there at her desk, but they had a plan to follow. First she would have to throw it in the dumpster, and then later, when it was safer, she or Matt would come back and fish it out.

Finally, when Ronan was on his lunch break, she grabbed the box and made her way out to the small back alleyway where the dumpster was. Just as she was about to throw the box in, she spotted the mechanical gears on either side of the container and cursed. It was a compacting machine. She wasn't sure when the company had switched from their regular dumpsters, but this threw a major wrench in her plan. Dumpsters with automatic compactors would crush all of the trash every few hours or so, and by the time she could come back to get the box it would be unrecognizable.

Glancing around her, she quickly grabbed the papers and notepad and stuffed them in her purse, which she had brought outside with her with the intent of going to grab a coffee directly after disposing of the box. With the only promising contents of the box safely in her bag, she tossed the rest of the box in the trash and promptly left the alley.

Unfortunately, she didn't notice the very small, inconspicuous camera placed high on the brick wall, directed squarely at the dumpster.

After work, Sarah tiredly made the walk from the subway station to her apartment, lost deep in thoughts about what she might find in Yates' stuff. She was so zoned out that when someone jumped out at her as she was fishing for her keys, she screamed and automatically held her stun gun out towards them.

"Whoa! Do not taze the pregnant woman, Sarah!"

Sarah immediately threw the stun gun back in her purse as she recognized her best friend, Lauren.

"Lauren! Oh my God. You scared the hell out of me," Sarah said, clutching her chest. "What are you doing here?"

Sarah recovered enough to give her friend a hug as Lauren explained why she was there.

"Well, you cancelled on me again for drinks on Saturday. So I figured if I actually showed up at your place, you'd have no excuse to not come out with me and Greg for a few drinks, and sad, non-alcoholic beverages for me…right?"

"Lauren…" Sarah began, thinking of the important papers in her bag.

Lauren rested her hands on her giant stomach and fixed Sarah with a stern look. "Do you know how much effort it took me to get all the way over here and then wait for you? I had to talk to at least three passing strangers about what gender my baby is. I hate making baby talk with strangers, Sarah. Why do they need to know?"

"I…yeah, okay. Just one or two drinks," Sarah said. After the past week, numbing the constant anxiety with some alcohol didn't sound like an awful idea. "I need to get changed first. Come on, let's see if the three of us can even all fit on the elevator."

When they reached Sarah's apartment, Lauren slowly lowered herself down onto the couch. "Oh, man. I'm not getting back up now. It's done. I mean, at least until I have to pee, which should be every three minutes or so at this stage, apparently."

"How pregnant are you now, anyway?" Sarah said as she slipped into her bedroom and closed the door partially behind her. "Like, thirteen months?"

"Ugh, I think this kid is just planning on growing up in there," Lauren's muffled voice replied. Sarah heard the television flick on, and grinned as the opening music to some trashy reality show floated through the air.

She quickly wiggled out of her work clothes, leaving them in a pile on her floor and grabbing a dress from her closet. It wasn't a very fancy dress—so hopefully they weren't going anywhere too upscale—but she liked how the blue brought out her eyes, and the way it still fit her well even after she'd lost a bit of weight.

As she slipped her shoes on, her gaze lingered on her purse with the papers inside. She glanced at the door. It wasn't like Lauren could easily sneak up on her anyway. Sarah was pretty sure she wouldn't be able to get up from the couch without help. She could take at least a moment to look at what she had just stolen.

She tip-toed over to the bed and took the papers from her purse. Shuffling through them, she saw that for the most part they seemed fairly innocuous. No death ray schematics, no newspaper-letter ransom notes. Disappointed, she picked up the notebook and flipped through it. She raised her eyebrows. Most of the pages were blank, but there were large chunks of perforated paper on the side where someone had clearly ripped out many pages at a time. Yates? Or someone who had gone through his stuff after his death?

Sarah ran her fingers over some of the blank pages, and she could feel small indents from where Yates had written with enough pressure that it left an impression on the next page. She knew that going over the indents with a pencil to see the writing was something that only worked in movies, but maybe a certain blind man could make out the words with his annoying heightened senses.

She opened her desk drawer and threw the papers and notebook in, before grabbing her purse and returning to the living room.

"Do you know how long you were in there?" Lauren asked. "I already had my baby, he grew up and went to college. This baby in here? My seventh child. That is how much time passed while you were getting ready."

"If you have seven children, I'm going to leave you," Sarah said.

"You can't leave me. Only boyfriends and husbands can leave; best friends are stuck with me. Help me up?" she said, and Sarah reached a hand down to haul her up.

"Speaking of boyfriends," Lauren continued. "What's happening with your love life these days? I can't believe I even have to ask that, I should already know. Any guys keeping you busy at night?" she asked, winking.

Not in the good way, Sarah thought, frowning as she thought of the only night time visitor she ever got. She didn't think intimidating masked men were what Lauren meant. "Um…not really."

Lauren jabbed an accusatory finger at her. "You hesitated! There is someone. You always do this, you never let us meet guys until you've been dating them for decades. Secretive Sarah."

"You would scare them off after the first few dates! And also, there is no guy! Just me."

Her friend looked unconvinced. "You remember what I said happens when you lie to a pregnant woman, Sarah."

"I remember, I remember. Hemorrhaging, death, etcetera. Come on, let's get to the bar and find Greg. He never grills me about my love life."

~*~*~*~

Their usual bar was crowded as always. Sarah remembered that they had especially great drink specials on Mondays, something she had regularly taken advantage of back when she actually went out with friends all the time.

"Where's Greg?" Sarah called over the noise.

"He's saving a table for us near the back," Lauren responded. Sure enough, Sarah spotted her friend's husband near the back, sitting by himself at one of the tall tables. He jumped up as they approached and guided his pregnant wife as she hopped up onto the tall bar chair.

"Sarah!" he greeted cheerfully in his clipped British accent. "You are alive! Lauren kept telling me you were dead. Or maybe she said dead to her. I don't know, but it was very dramatic either way, so I'm glad you're here to be the level headed one."

Lauren fixed him with an affectionate glare. "I have waited my whole life for an excuse to be overly dramatic and demanding, and now that I finally have one, you're going to try and take it from me? What's the point of even having a baby, then?" Their server appeared with food menus and cocktail lists, and Lauren beamed at him. "Hi! I'd love a sad, non-alcoholic lemonade please."

"I'll take a double whiskey," Greg said, then pointed to Sarah. "And so will she, and we'd like for you to keep them both coming! Thanks!"

"Wait, what?" Sarah said, but the server was already gone. "No, no, no, I have work in the morning!"

"Well, maybe if you had come out on Saturday like we asked, we wouldn't have that problem," Lauren said sweetly. "Besides, it's on us!"

"What? Lauren—" Sarah protested.

"I'm insisting! If I can't drink, you need to drink for both of us, because we all know Greg is a lightweight," Lauren said, and Greg shrugged and nodded. "Plus, I need you to be just a _little_ drunk soon."

"Why?" Sarah asked suspiciously.

Greg leaned over and whispered loudly to her, "Because she's going to ask you to plan her baby shower."

"Greg!" Lauren scolded.

"She gets too agreeable when she's drunk, it wouldn't be fair to ask her then! I would feel bad. It's like tricking a child. No offense," he said to Sarah.

"Well, offense…kind of taken," she mumbled.

"Yeah, Greg," Lauren said. "Sarah is a grown woman who can totally hold her liquor, and she's also pretty and smart and perfect and exactly the kind of friend who will definitely throw my baby shower for me," she finished, smiling widely at Sarah with huge eyes.

Sarah glared at her. "Do you not remember when you asked me to plan your bachelorette party—"

"I do, but this is different—"

"—and I had to call up all your old sorority sisters because you insisted on inviting them—"

"Most of them live out in the suburbs or rehab now anyway so you don't have to worry about that!"

"—and I had to talk to your mother, who hates me—"

"No! No, she hates Greg, she just resents you because you introduced me to him." Greg raised his glass and winked. Sarah ignored him.

"—and then you made me change the date three times in two months—"

"But I only have one month til I'm going to pop, so how many times can I possibly do that?"

"—and while I was doing all of this, you called me at least five times a day to check and make sure I was planning everything right."

"I will almost definitely probably not do that this time."

Sarah stared at her skeptically. She already knew she'd say yes, but she never passed up an opportunity to remind Lauren of how bad she was at letting people throw her parties.

The server set the whiskey down on the table and Lauren pushed it closer to Sarah. "Did I mention you look so great tonight?" she said. "That is _such_ a pretty dress."

Sarah looked down. "You gave me this dress."

"And you probably didn't send me a thank you note, so plan my shower?"

Sarah rolled her eyes, then looked down at the whiskey. She brought the glass to her lips and threw the entire drink back in one go. The warm, fuzzy feeling spread through her body immediately. She closed her eyes, relieved to have some sort of relaxation, some reprieve from everything that had been going on. When she opened them again, Greg and Lauren were both looking at her hopefully.

"If I say yes, just how many of these are you planning on buying me?"

Lauren beamed at her, and from that point there was no turning back.

~*~*~*~

The server kept drinks for both Sarah and Greg in ready supply, and they both steadily became more inebriated, while Lauren laughed so loudly and told her stories with such wild hand movements that several bar-goers gave her dirty looks, obviously believing her to be drunk as well.

Shortly after eleven—a good four hours after they had arrived at the bar—Sarah was well past drunk, and she and Lauren were deep in a heated argument.

"So, you're telling me," Sarah said in disbelief, "that you would _actually_ make a sex tape with _Jeff Goldblum_?"

"Yes, of course! Are you telling me you _wouldn't_ make a sex tape with Jeff Goldblum?" Lauren said, scandalized.

" _No!_ What is _wrong_ with you?" Sarah said, laughing. "He's like seventy!"

"Oh, he is sixty-two, at the most!"

"That's way too exact!" Sarah accused, pointing her finger at Lauren. "You knew that off the top of your head! Greg, your—your wife doesn't know who our current governor is, but she has Jeff Goldblum's birthday memorized."

Greg's shoulders were shaking hard as he laughed, and Lauren tried to defend herself. In the middle of her argument, Sarah's phone lit up, but she was too busy sipping her drink to notice.

"Your phone is ringing!"

"What?" Sarah said, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes.

"Your phone!" Lauren repeated, grabbing Sarah's cell phone off the table and holding it up. "Ooh, it's an unsaved number! Is this the guy you didn't want to talk about earlier?"

Even in the cloud of alcohol surrounding her brain, Sarah knew that it was undoubtedly Matt, calling because he thought she had disappeared on him again. Which would seem likely after their last extremely unfriendly encounter.

"Funny, funny, give me the phone," Sarah said, reaching for it. But Lauren held it out of reach with a mischievous look in her eye. Sarah's stomach dropped when she saw the same look mirrored on Greg's face.

"Wait, guys, what are you doing—"

Before she could say anything, Lauren hit the answer button on her phone and greeted Matt loudly. "Hey there, hot stuff! Are you Sarah's mystery nighttime friend?"

"Wait, wait, wait, no, don't do that—" Sarah protested, reaching across the table for her phone.

"Listen, Sarah's already told us everything about you, so there's no need to be so secretive!" Greg leaned over and called into the phone. Sarah's eyes grew wide and she hopped down from her chair to circle the table and get her phone.

"Oh, my God. No, no, no, don't tell him _that_ —"

"Hello? Hello? He hung up!" Lauren said indignantly, handing the phone back to Sarah. "Rude. Who calls people these days anyway? It is 2015, send a text."

Sarah stared down at the phone, dumbfounded. Had she been sober, she might have started panicking at the highly misleading conversation that had just happened, but the alcohol pumping through her system made it more of just a minor worry.

"I should probably call him back?"

"No!" said Lauren. "Call him later! Who would get that annoyed by a phone call anyway? You always date the cranky ones, Sarah. And he'll still be cranky when you call him later! We're having fun right now!"

Sarah looked up at her friends, who were both grinning at her. Greg handed her her glass of whiskey, eyebrows raised. She glanced back down at the phone, and then shoved it in her pocket. Lauren was right. She was having fun, for the first time in a long time, and the world of Orion and her father and Matt for once seemed so wonderfully far away.

~*~*~*~*~

An hour and a half later, Sarah barely managed to stumble through her front door. She had split a cab with Lauren and Greg, but insisted that she could make it up to her apartment on her own. The journey had been a difficult one.

She dropped her purse on the table and immediately went to the kitchen to look for something to drunkenly snack on. Unfortunately, her fridge and cabinets were less than well-stocked. Groaning in annoyance, she slid down the wall on the far side of her kitchen until she was sitting on the floor.

She jumped when she glanced at the fridge and saw a tiny pair of mouse eyes staring at her from underneath.

"Hey! Mouse. What are you doing under my fridge?" she asked accusatorially, her words slurring together a bit.

The mouse didn't answer.

"Are you looking for food?" she whispered. "Because you are out of luck. This is a...a garbage kitchen. No food here."

Sarah leaned forward slightly to get a better look at the small creature, tucking her hair behind her ear.

"You can't live here, little buddy. I'm very sorry," she confided in the small rodent.

"Who are you talking to?"

Sarah jumped with a small shriek and whipped her head around. Matt was leaning against the wall near his usual window, his masked head cocked to the side.

"Oh my _God_ ," she said, trying to catch her breath. "You scared the Christ out of me. Why do people keep doing that tonight? How did you get in here?"

"The window was unlocked. I knocked, but I think you were busy talking to…yourself."

"Okay, no," she slurred defensively. "I was talking to this mouse I just met."

He pushed himself off the wall and coming into the kitchen, where he lingered on the opposite side from where she sat in front of the fridge. "Right…and was the mouse the one who intercepted our phone call earlier?"

"O-oh," Sarah said, wincing. Her alcohol-addled short term memory had already forgotten about that part of the night. "Ummm…shit. Okay, wait, just—just stay on that side of the room and listen for like, two seconds. That was an _extra_ misleading conversation. They were just being really drunk—well, just one of them was really drunk, the other one is just kind of a nosy bitch but also a very likeable person, but the point is, um…" _Shit, what was I talking about?_ "Buuuut, my point is that I know it sounded really bad, but they don't know anything about you, like _at all_. They think you're some guy I'm dating that I just don't want them to meet, which is so, so, so ridiculously far from reality. I mean aside from the part about me not ever wanting you to meet them, which is like…way true. But I swear there is a zero percent chance of them finding out the truth, so you can do whatever creepy heartbeat thing you do, and…okay?" _Am I rambling? I feel like I've been talking for ten minutes._

They faced each other in silence for a few moments, and Sarah tried to figure out what he was thinking. He didn't look angry, but maybe she just wasn't as good at reading him when she was drunk, because he almost looked amused.

"I know," he said finally, and Sarah squinted at him in confusion.

"You do?"

He laughed darkly, leaning back against her counter and looking down. "People who are familiar with my…alter ego don't generally refer to me as 'hot stuff'. Unless you have some remarkably brave friends."

"Right. That…makes sense," Sarah admitted.

"Besides, if I thought you had told them something, this conversation would not be going as pleasantly for you as it is right now," he said casually.

Sarah rubbed her right arm, where the bruise he had left was finally almost faded. "Yeah, I remember," she said under her breath. He lifted his head back up at her comment and she snapped her mouth shut. _Gotta stop saying things under your breath, Sarah._

"Should I bother asking who they were?"

"Um…on a scale of alleyways to semi-friendly kitchen talks, how will you react if I say I can't tell you?"

Sarah watched him warily, waiting to see if he was going to cross the room. She really doubted she could stand up very fast if needed. He tilted his head back and exhaled in frustration, but stayed where he was.

"You know, I've interrogated mob bosses and cold blooded killers who haven't refused to give me information as many times as you have," he said.

"Well, yeah, but they're mobsters and killers," Sarah said, throwing her hands up dramatically. "They probably have shitty, mobster-killer friends who aren't worth protecting."

"That, and they're usually already bleeding on the ground when I ask them."

"Um…" Sarah said nervously.

"That wasn't a threat," he said quietly. "Just an observation. The last three times I've seen you, you've kept secrets from me, and still been able to walk away each time. Most people who refuse to give me information don't have that privilege. You do, because you're useful. Just don't push it."

She squinted her eyes at him, trying to make her vision stop doubling. Right now it looked like there were two Daredevils instead of just one. _That would be an actual nightmare._

"Do you know how many years I went without anyone ever wanting to actively kill me?" she asked him suddenly. "Like…like a _lot_. All them, almost. Just years and years of normal. And _now_ …I spend all of my daytime with coworkers who hate me, and then at night I hang out with a scary vigilante, who also hates me."

"I don't hate you, Sarah," he said. "I just don't know you."

"Well, there's probably a lot of people you don't know, but you don't go around slamming them into the sides of dumpsters. Or—I don't know, maybe you do, actually," she mumbled.

"Most of those people either don't know who I am, or don't work for a company of criminals. You're the only one lucky enough to fall in both camps."

Sarah leaned her head back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. "Well…if I could give up either of those camps I would. Both of them, actually. I hate going to that place every day. I'd do anything to not have to. Obviously," she said, gesturing to him.

"Yeah, I…I know. People do anything for family," he said, and in her inebriated state she missed the implication of those words. "But soon enough, there won't be anything left of Orion. That was the deal."

Sarah turned her head towards the mouse that was still lingering under her fridge, watching her. She pointed a finger at him. " _You_ don't hate me, mouse. You and me…we are _good_. Right?"

The mouse made a small squeaking noise as though it was responding. Sarah pointed at him again, looking up at the masked man at the other end of the kitchen.

"Is he lying?" she asked Matt, then loudly whispered, "Can you hear his heartbeat, too?"

This time she definitely saw a very small, amused smile ghost across his face briefly. Maybe the first one she had ever seen on him. He changed the subject before she could think about it too much.

"Do you have anything for me tonight, or should I come back when you're…less inebriated?"

She nodded. "No, I do, I do."

Sarah started to stand, but a wave of dizziness hit her and she had nothing close by with which she could drag herself up. She heard Matt sigh and move from his position across the kitchen, and when she looked up she was surprised to see him extending a hand down towards her to help her up. She took it hesitantly, and he pulled her up easily. He let go as soon as she was fully standing.

"Not that I'm judging, but do you always drink this much on random weekdays?"

"More so since I met you," she retorted, making her way unsteadily into her bedroom. Her back was turned, so she didn't notice the slight frown on his face at her comment.

She returned to the room with the papers and the notebook. Handing them to him, she sat down in one of the chairs at her kitchen table, not feeling especially steady on her feet. "Okay, so…I haven't really had a chance to look at these, yet. But they were Yates'."

"How'd you get these out? I thought you were going to throw them out and we'd come back for them later."

"Mmm, but the dumpster had a—a…combat. Comrade. Comptroller?" _What is the goddamn word I'm looking for?_ Matt just tilted his head, bemused, and she made a vague crushing gesture with her hands, hoping he could sense it somehow. "A thing that crushes all the trash. The box would've been useless. So I just shoved the papers in my purse."

"Do you think there's anything useful in them?"

"Maybe not the papers," she said, still slurring a bit. "But the notebook has a bunch of pages ripped out, and you can feel the um…you know, little marks…indents! From where he wrote on other pages. I thought maybe you could use your…super…whatever to figure it out."

Matt nodded. "Probably. I'll take them with me. Anything new on the task force?"

She shook her head. "Nope. I think since they think you, um…murdered someone, people maybe aren't super excited to try and find you."

"Good. Maybe they'll stay that way."

Sarah nodded, putting her head down slowly as another wave of dizziness hit her. _A compactor! That was the word._ She hadn't been this drunk in years. Why had she done this, again?

She didn't even hear Matt move away from her, but there was a small clinking sound near her head and she looked up to see a glass of water on the table.

"You might want to drink that," he said.

She nodded, then said suddenly, "Did you know that the last time you gave me water, the glass had pictures of dicks all over it?

There was a confused silence. "What?"

"The glass you picked was from my friend's bachelorette party, and it had these, um…sparkly penises all over it. And it was kind of funny, except that, you know…you were there, so it was mostly just, um, terrifying, I guess. And I remember wondering if that stupid glass was going to be the last thing I saw before you killed me. It was a…weird night," she finished distractedly.

His lips parted, like he was going to say something, but no words came out. She could only see his lower face, but his expression was odd and she couldn't place it. Sarah put her head back down for a few seconds to make the room stop spinning. When she looked up, he was gone.

~*~*~*~

The next morning, Sarah had the worst hangover she had experienced in many years. Not since college. To make it worse, she couldn't even skip work like she used to skip class on days like these. She slowly rolled out of bed, trying to ignore the pounding in her head as she stumbled towards the shower.

As the water pounded her back, something was hovering on the edge of her mind, bothering her. She only had hazy recollections of most of her conversation with Matt last night, but something about it was nagging at her brain. She mentally went through what she remembered talking about. There had been a mouse, and some paperwork, and some discussion of her friends. It was something he had said, she knew that. Something that hadn't bothered her at the time, but was setting off alarms now. What was it?

_"I know. People do anything for family."_

_Shit._

She slapped her hand down on the faucet handle, abruptly ending her shower. Whipping the curtain open, she grabbed her bathrobe and her phone, wiping her hands off before calling her father. He answered on the third ring.

"Hello?"

"Dad? Are you okay?" she asked anxiously.

"Yeah, honey, I'm fine. Why?"

A feeling of relief rushed through her, but the dread didn't leave her chest. "I, um…just had a weird feeling. I'm sorry. Just, um, let me know if anything odd happens, okay? And don't answer your door."

As she ended her conversation with her very confused father, Sarah's stomach was already twisting at the thought of the next phone call she'd have to make.

Scrolling through her recent calls list, Sarah raised her eyebrows when she noticed that, in her drunken state last night, she had finally saved Matt's number in her phone. Where every other contact had a first and last name, for his number there was just a tiny devil Emoji. She shook her head, too distressed to think about her drunken sense of humor, and hit the call button.

"Sarah?" he answered.

"Matt," she said, suddenly aware that she hadn't actually thought out what to say to him. She didn't want to have another hysterical conversation over the phone, where she couldn't see him and read his expression. "Um, I—I need to talk to you. Soon."

"What's wrong?" he said suspiciously.

"Nothing. I just…I need to discuss something. With you. About all this," she said, wincing at how sketchy she sounded even to her own ears. There was a silence on the other end of the line.

"Okay. I'll come by tonight while I'm out."

"Can it be sooner?" She really didn't want to wait until 11 or 12 at night, and she thought the conversation might be a bit easier if he weren't in costume.

"Alright," he said slowly. "How about earlier in the evening? I'll be in your building to go over some paperwork with Mrs. Benedict, anyway."

"Yes. Yes, that's perfect. Um, I will…see you then," she said nervously, then hung up.

The day at work would be a long and excruciating one. Her nauseous stomach and splitting headache were a good part of it, but the rest was entirely based on the sinking feeling of dread that Matt knew something he really shouldn't. And if he did, she had no idea what to do about it.

~*~*~*~

Around six that night, Matt finally extracted himself from Mrs. Benedict's—admittedly amusing—long ramblings, nodding politely as she said goodbye, went on a tangent about something, said goodbye again, gave him some advice on life, and finally said goodbye one more time.

Matt listened at Sarah's door for a few seconds before knocking. It felt odd to be at her door, in normal clothes, during daylight hours. He could sense that she was in the kitchen, sitting on her countertop, and it sounded like she was opening mail. She was anxious already, he could tell, and her nervousness kicked into overdrive when she heard his knock. He also didn't miss the fact that Mrs. Benedict popped her head back out of her door, delightedly watching as Sarah let him into her apartment.

Matt stood by one of the living room chairs while Sarah paced around the room. Her heartbeat was fast, like it usually was when he was around her, but this time it was different. She didn't just seem scared, she seemed agitated. Every few seconds she would fidget with her long hair, running a hand through it or sweeping it from one shoulder to the other. He folded his hands on his cane and waited for her to speak.

"Last night," she said finally. "You said that people will do anything for their family."

Matt frowned, annoyed at himself for the slip. He hadn't been too concerned about watching what he said to someone as drunk as she had been. The girl had been so wasted that she had been talking to a mouse; how had she possibly been lucid enough to have caught that small of a slip?

"I…did say that."

"What did you mean by it?"

Matt didn't respond, debating whether to lie and let her think that she still had some semblance of privacy, or to get it all out in the open. He hadn't been planning to bring up the fact that he knew about her father; he had no plans to involve him in this, after all. But he hadn't expected her to bring it up.

"You know, don't you?" she asked in a small voice when he didn't answer her first question. "About…"

Matt decided not to pretend. "Your father. Yeah. I do."

Sarah sank down onto her couch and put her head in her hands, grasping her hair tightly in frustration. Her heart started beating even faster, and he could hear her breathing become purposefully deep and slow, like she was trying to keep herself from panicking. He winced internally.

"How?" Her voice was muffled from the position of her hanging head.

"You were only about two blocks away when you called him. I…heard you leave him a message. I didn't…didn't know who you were leaving it for. Just that they sent you to the police station. So I…I followed you there on Friday."

She snapped her head up. "You followed me? I—how? No, no, I went there during the day. In a cab. How could you possibly have followed me there without anyone seeing you?"

Matt shrugged. "Rooftops."

"Rooftops. Jesus. This is so messed up. So, now that you're in my life, I don't get to go anywhere without worrying that you're _following_ me? You don't get to know everything about me, it's not fair—"

"In case you've forgotten, I didn't exactly ask for you to know so much about my life either," he snapped.

"What?" she said in a disbelieving tone. "How—how do you possibly think that's the same thing? I found out about you by _accident_. I didn't purposefully follow you around to find out your secrets!"

"And yet that doesn't make it any less dangerous for you to know them," he argued. She lapsed into a frustrated silence. "I didn't know…that it was going to be something like that. But I couldn't just not find out. It was too risky. With the position you're in."

Sarah inhaled deeply, clearly trying to calm herself down. "How…much do you know?"

He wet his lips, considering how much he should tell her. "I know that you were at the station to try to deal with his traffic ticket. I assume that's what was in your purse. And I know that he's…not well. Mentally. He's confused, and forgetful. I'd guess Alzheimer's, or…some sort of dementia. And that he got some visitors recently who made you very nervous."

She was quiet, though Matt could hear her heart pounding through the silence. Oddly enough, as scared as she had been during some of their previous encounters, ones with masks and dark alleyways, he hadn't seen her as panicked as she seemed now.

"Please, I don't—I don't have anything else. I can't—there's nothing else to— _shit._ "

He cocked his head in confusion. She sounded so distressed that he couldn't even figure out what she was trying to say. "What are you talking about?"

"I don't have anything else to bargain with. I'm—I'm keeping your secret so you don't hurt me. And I'm spying in exchange for you bringing down Orion. That's all I have, I don't…Christ. I don't know what else I can do. He has nothing to do with us, Matt."

The end of her rant, which had begun so vehemently, trailed off in a pleading tone, and Matt's chest tightened guiltily as he realized that he had terrorized her to the point where she thought she had to give him something in exchange for him not hurting her family. He sighed and felt around for the edge of the arm chair facing the couch, sitting down slowly in the hopes that she might calm down a bit if he wasn't standing over her. He could feel her watching his every move nervously.

"I'm not going to hurt your father, Sarah," he said softly.

She didn't respond, and he could tell she was staring at him, probably distrustfully. He didn't blame her.

"This agreement we have? It's between you and me," he said, gesturing between them. "No one else. Don't get me wrong, if you break your end, you'll have to answer to me, and I think it's pretty clear by now that you won't like what that entails. That much hasn't changed."

Sarah's hand automatically drifted from its place on her lap up to the faint bruise on her arm. He ignored another twist of guilt and continued. "But that's you. Not your father. I have no reason to hurt him, or your friends from the phone last night. The only way anyone you care about will be involved in this is if _you_ bring them into it by telling them something you shouldn't. Otherwise, they don't exist to me. The only person whose safety you need to be careful of here is your own. Understand?"

"So…that's it? You went to all that work to find out what my secret was, and now that you know…I just have to take your word that you won't use it against me?"

Matt leaned his head back and sighed, thinking of the similar question he had posed to her not too long ago. "It's not fun, is it? Having to trust someone you hardly know with something that could hurt the people you love?"

She didn't answer, and he gave her a minute to get her thoughts together before continuing. "I take it this is why you work for Orion. Your father. He's their leverage."

"Yeah," she said quietly. He heard her breathing falter slightly, like she was debating whether or not to continue. Matt waited. "He…had problems with gambling. He owed some of Fisk's men a lot of money, and they'd show up every so often to collect. Usually he had enough to—to keep them off his back for a while. But then they, um…they showed up at his house about a year ago. After his diagnosis. He—he didn't recognize them, didn't know why they were there. And he didn't have their money. I don't think he even remembered he owed any debts."

"I'm guessing they didn't respond well to that."

"No. They put him in the hospital," she said shakily. "He was in there for a week, and—and he was so confused about why. Every time I'd visit, he'd ask me what he did wrong, why people wanted to hurt him. I told him it was just someone picking a random target."

"So how'd you get involved?"

She took a deep breath. "Um…a few days after he got out of the hospital, a man showed up at my door. His name was James Wesley." Matt's fists clenched at the familiar name. "He said a bunch of…fake charming stuff about understanding how difficult it must be, with my dad being so sick. Said that I could take some of that weight off of his shoulders. He offered me a job at one of Fisk's companies. Told me as long I kept my mouth shut about what I do and see, they'd leave him alone. I get half my paycheck, and the other half goes towards paying his debts."

"Doesn't seem like a very quick way to get their money back," Matt said.

"I don't think they care about the money. Not really. It's just an excuse to have one more person under their control."

The news that she was getting by on half a paycheck made several things about her clearer. He had noticed how thin her wrist was when he had grabbed it, how her stomach growled all the time and he could barely smell any food in her kitchen. He wondered how much her weekly cab rides to her father's home ate into her tight budget.

"As long as everything goes like it should on both our sides, they won't be a problem much longer," he said. She didn't respond. "Is that...everything you needed to talk about?"

"Yeah," she said so quietly that no one with normal hearing could have heard.

He stood and grabbed his cane, but paused before heading towards the door. "I'm really not trying to ruin your life, Sarah. I'm just trying to make sure you don't ruin mine."

She nodded, and he turned to leave. Just as he reached the door, she called out after him.

"Matt," she said, biting her lip. He turned. "You can hear my heartbeat, right? You—you can tell if I mean what I'm saying?"

He furrowed his brow, confused by her question. "Yeah. Why?"

"I don't have a whole lot of power here. I know that," she said in an unsteady voice, before taking a deep breath and speaking more forcefully. "But if you go after my dad…your name and face will be on the cover of every newspaper in this city. It won't matter what you do to me afterwards. There will be nothing you can do to take that back."

Matt's eyebrows shot up in surprise. Sarah's breathing was rapid and nervous, and she was tense, like she was waiting for him to react badly. But her heartbeat was steady; she wasn't bluffing. It made sense, he supposed. She had to know it was dangerous to threaten someone who could so easily hurt her in retaliation; why waste that risk on something you didn't mean?

"You're…threatening me?" he clarified.

"N-no?" she said uncertainly. He could tell she was fighting the urge to back away, but surprisingly she stood her ground. "Well, yes, I—I guess so. I just—you said yourself that people will do anything for family. And I want to make sure that you understand…what I'd do for mine."

Matt was consistently surprised by the apparent dissonance between Sarah's emotional state and her actions. For a girl who literally stuttered in fear for most of her conversations with him, she was remarkably willing to stick her neck out when the situation called for it, and the juxtaposition was confusingly unpredictable.

Finally, he nodded slowly. "If it were my father, I'd probably do the same."

Then he turned the handle and stepped out into the stuffy hallway, closing the door behind him. Despite the surprising strength of her parting statement, he could still hear her lean against the closed door and curse shakily to herself as he tapped his cane along the floor, finding his way down the hallway to the elevator.

~*~*~*~

"Hi. Excuse me. Hello?" Sarah tried to get the attention of the bored clerk behind the counter at the court house. The woman had very long, fake nails and her eyebrows were drawn on just a few centimeters too high. She was studiously ignoring Sarah as she looked at something on her screen.

Sarah had given up on getting the police to give her a recommendation for a reduction on her father's ticket. She figured it was a long shot anyway, and maybe it would just be easier to go to court and try to get it lowered there. The only problem was, she had turned over every inch of her apartment and her desk at work, and she couldn't find the ticket. She knew it she had slipped it back in her purse when she left the police station. The ticket was her only record of when her father's court date was supposed to be. So, she found herself at the courthouse after work on Wednesday, hoping they could help her. Unfortunately, she seemed to have found the most unhelpful employee the courthouse had.

"I have this traffic ticket, and I need to know when the court date is," she said.

"It's printed in the bottom right corner of your ticket," the woman replied without looking up.

"Right, but I don't actually know where I put it," Sarah said embarrassedly.

The receptionist sighed and eyeballed her. Sarah thought that the woman seemed especially put upon for someone who, based on the reflection in the glass cabinet behind her, was currently doing nothing but playing Solitaire. "Name?"

"Um, mine, or the name on the ticket?"

"Now, why would I want your name if it's not your ticket? Are you someone special? The name on the ticket."

"Sorry, sorry. Mitch Corrigan," Sarah said.

The woman clacked away at her keyboard with her long fingernails for a minute, looking up the court date information. Whatever popped up on the screen made her roll her eyes.

"Honey. Please do not waste my time. That ticket has already been lowered to a warning, and you know you can't get it any lower than that. A warning's basically nothing anyway."

Sarah gave the woman a blank look. "I don't…what do you mean, it's already been lowered? I haven't even gone to court to ask them to do that."

"No," the woman said slowly. "But your lawyer did."

"My…who now?"

"Your lawyer. He already took care of it yesterday."

Sarah wrinkled her brow. "Um…does it mention the name of my lawyer, by any chance?"

The woman's heavily arched eyebrows went up again. "Honey, you don't know his name? I already exited out of that screen."

"Well, could you maybe bring it back up?" Sarah asked hopefully.

The woman gave her an exasperated look, but turned her attention back to the screen, tapping away on her keyboard.

"Murdock," she said shortly, looking up at Sarah, who stared at her, dumbfounded.

"Murdock," Sarah repeated. "Um…like, _Matthew_ Murdock?"

The cranky woman glanced down at the screen and nodded. "So you do know your own lawyer's name. Well, that's nice."

"He argued my ticket down for me?"

"That is what lawyers do, yes."

"So…now it's…gone, I don't have to pay anything, or…go to court or anything?"

"That's right. I am glad you know how the justice system works. Is that it?"

"Um…yeah. Yeah, that's it. Thank you," Sarah said faintly.

"A bit of advice? You don't know where your ticket is, you didn't know when the court date was, and you can't remember the name of your lawyer. Maybe invest in a day planner or something. Some ginseng."

Sarah nodded vaguely at the advice before swinging her bag over her shoulder and heading for the door. Her brow was still furrowed in confusion as she processed what had just happened, but as she stepped out of the courthouse and into the warm sunshine, a small, hesitant smile formed on her face.


	8. Acquaintances

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends! A few people have asked if Karen will be appearing in this fic, and the answer is yes, of course! Most of the story right now focuses around a part of Matt's life that Karen doesn't know about, so she hasn't played a big role so far, but she will definitely be coming into the plot soon enough, don't worry.

It was a few days before Matt got back to Sarah about the notebook she had given him. When he knocked on her window that night, she didn't bother opening it. Instead she just called out that it was unlocked, and he immediately slid it open and pulled himself inside. She watched him from her couch, where she was curled up with a cup of tea, sorting through her (many) overdue bills.

"You really shouldn't leave your window unlocked," he said by way of greeting.

"To be fair, I don't think anyone other than you would try to climb that fire escape," she told him. "I'm pretty sure it's held together with duct tape in some spots."

He ignored her comment. "I managed to figure out some of the writing in the notebook."

"Yeah?" she said, sitting up straighter. "Was there anything important in there?"

"Maybe. Yates was taking notes on Jason. Your new head of security. Looks like maybe he was trying to figure out who had hired him."

"Why would he care? Jason put him on his special task force, didn't he? Seems like he would've been happy with that."

Matt shook his head. "The thing is, I don't think he did put Yates on the task force. When I went to his apartment that night, he knew about the group, but he said he wasn't in it. I don't think he was lying."

Sarah frowned. "So what was he talking to Ronan about in his office for so long, then?"

"I don't know. Looks like maybe Ronan is someone I should pay a visit to soon."

"Good idea," she said a little too enthusiastically, and the corner of Matt's mouth twitched slightly. "Because…I'm sure he'll have information," she amended. _And he's a creepy jerk._

"Did you ever find out Jason's address?"

Sarah shook her head. "He never showed up in the system. But HR doesn't always update that stuff very quickly. I don't even know his last name, actually."

"Let me know as soon as you find out. He's the highest link in the organization we have right now."

"Okay," Sarah said. "I, um…I haven't really come across anything helpful in the last few days. Sorry. But Ronan mentioned that he'd be meeting up with the other guys on the task force soon, so…I guess that's still a thing."

"Got any names?"

"Not yet. Sometime in the next couple of days, I think."

"Alright," he said, then hesitated. "Does the name Benny Florence mean anything to you?"

Sarah thought about it for a few seconds. "Benny Florence…yeah. _Yeah_. He, uh, he used to be like an enforcer for Fisk. He's a psycho. If Fisk wanted to strong arm a cop who wasn't cooperating, he'd send Benny after the cop's wife and kids. Just to send a message. I think he got locked up when Fisk did, though. Why?"

"I could read his name in the notebook, but I couldn't make out the context. Maybe I'll have to check it out. Know of any of his associates?"

"No," Sarah said slowly. "I can try and find out?"

Matt shook his head. "I'll look into it. You just focus on figuring out who's on the group of people trying to track me down. Alright?"

Sarah nodded. "Alright."

"Anything else?"

She chewed her nail, debating whether she should bring up the ticket. She shook her head. He started towards the window and she changed her mind.

"Matt?"

He turned, cocking his head expectantly.

"Um…I went to the court house yesterday, after work. They, uh…they told me that you argued my dad's ticket down for us," she said hesitantly. It was technically a statement, but her tone was questioning.

Matt regarded her for a few seconds before answering. "Yeah. It was, uh, stuck to the back of one of the papers you gave me. Probably got mixed together in your bag."

_No wonder I couldn't find it._ "Oh. Um, well, not to sound ungrateful or anything, but…"

"You want to know why I helped you."

She nodded slowly. "Yeah."

He was quiet for a long time, and she might have thought that he wasn't going to respond at all if not for the fact that he also wasn't leaving.

"You…have a lot on your shoulders right now," Matt said finally. "I know some of that is because of me. Plus…I figured with half a paycheck, you probably didn't have a lot of extra money to spend on a lawyer."

"I had _no_ money to spend on a lawyer. Or paying off the ticket. I don't really know what I would've…anyway. I just…wanted to say thank you. Taking care of the ticket when you didn't have to, it…it was kind of you," she said quietly.

He observed her silently for a moment, and she wished that she could see more than just the bottom half of his face. With the mask on, it was almost impossible to read his expression.

"You're welcome," he said finally. He slid the window open and climbed back out onto the fire escape, lingering there for a moment longer. "And lock your window."

~*~*~*~*~*~

When Sarah got to work the next day, she saw that Ronan wasn't in his office, which was never a good sign. She approached her desk and was surprised to find a note informing her that her presence was required in Jason's office as soon as possible. Her heart hammered as she reluctantly put her things down and made her way to the elevator. She tried to reassure herself that this could be a routine meeting; nothing to worry about. But even as she told herself that, she didn't truly believe it, and her doubts were reinforced when she entered the office and saw Ronan already sitting there, speaking with Jason in a low voice. They both stopped speaking when she came in the room.

"Ms. Corrigan. If you don't mind closing the door behind you before you take a seat?" Jason said. His usual overly-whitened smile was absent from his face. Sarah reluctantly pushed the door closed and lowered herself into the chair that he had indicated.

"I think maybe you already know why you're here?" Jason said.

Sarah shook her head slowly. "N-no. Sorry."

Jason nodded slowly. "I see. Well, I suppose there's no need for preamble. Let's just jump right in. About once a week, I go through the footage for some of our lower security cameras, just to make sure everything seems in order. And when I checked through the footage for the camera out back…well, I'm sure you know what I saw."

He turned his computer monitor so that it was facing her, and her stomach dropped when she saw what was on the screen. It was her, wearing the outfit she had been wearing last Monday, and she was standing in the back alley with the box of Yates' stuff. The angle of the shot was high; the camera must have been high up on the wall. She watched herself take the papers and notebook out of the box and shove them in her purse before throwing the box in the dumpster and exiting the frame.

"I have to tell you, Ms. Corrigan. This is…concerning. To say the least," he said.

She stared at the video footage on the screen, her mind racing. She hadn't even thought there were cameras in that alleyway. They weren't on the list of installations, and they definitely weren't listed in the system before. She desperately tried to think of an excuse for why she would possibly need to keep those papers. To her surprise, Ronan spoke before she could.

"Worried you'll ruin your reputation in the office?" Ronan drawled.

Sarah cast a confused look his way before she remembered his insinuations from the week before. His hints that she had been sleeping with Yates, and that was why she had been so upset about his death. At the time, she had thought he was just trying to get a rise out of her, but the strange mix of disgust and smugness on his face at the moment told a different story. It looked like he really did believe she had been having an affair with Yates before he died.

She stared at him. Ronan was clearly bringing up the subject because he thought it was something she wouldn't want Jason to know. He had no way of knowing that he was unintentionally providing her with a plausible excuse for her actions earlier. It wasn't one she was crazy about going along with, but it would direct Jason down a path that was far from the truth, at least.

"Care to elaborate, Ronan?" Jason said.

Ronan smirked. "Just wondering if something in that box had to do with a certain secretary's personal life."

Jason switched his piercing gaze from Ronan to Sarah, clearly gauging her reaction. She swallowed nervously, unsure if she would be able to convince him that what Ronan was hinting at was why she had actually taken those papers.

"Right. I—we—um. Brian and I. We were…close. Um…physically," she said awkwardly, hoping that her stuttering came across as nerves and not an indicator that she was lying.

Jason's eyebrows went up. "I'm sorry, are you saying that you and Mr. Yates were…intimate?"

She hesitated, and the nodded. "Yes. I, um…I know it's against company regulations. We weren't…together…for very long. But, um, I had written him some notes of the…personal sort," she said meaningfully, and Jason's eyebrows went up higher. "And I just thought maybe they'd be in those papers. I—I didn't want to throw them out."

Jason stared at her for a long time before his usual chilling smile crept back onto his face. "Well. I'm not Human Resources. How employees spend their time together outside of work is none of my business. But I am curious…Mr. Yates dealt with some fairly confidential information within the company. Unfortunately, if he talked to you about some of those things, that could be a breach of security. It might result in…paperwork."

Sarah's eyes widened slightly. Somehow, she didn't think 'paperwork' really meant paperwork.

"Oh, no," she said quickly, trying to keep her voice casual. "It wasn't—wasn't really that kind of…relationship. There wasn't a whole lot of…talking, you know?"

"I bet," Ronan said under his breath, and Sarah had to stop her lip from curling.

Jason hummed thoughtfully. "You know, I did think it was odd that he kept glancing at you the last time we all had a meeting."

Sarah nodded quickly. "Yeah, I was, uh, thinking of maybe breaking it off. The, you know, the stress of keeping it all a secret at work, it was, um…s-stressful. I think he was just…worried. That day."

Jason tapped his pen on the desk, smiling but clearly unconvinced that she knew as little as she claimed. "Well. Like I said, my job is not to concern myself with how you conduct yourself with other employees. Ronan is your supervisor, so I'll let him decide how to deal with that."

Sarah kept her eyes straight ahead, purposefully not looking at Ronan, but from the corner of her eye she could see his face break out in a sick smile.

"If you're not too busy these next few work days," Jason continued, "I'd love for you to stop by. We can chat about some of our…company standards for security. What's acceptable, what's not. Just a friendly chat, to make sure you and I are on the same page," he said cheerfully. His smile never seemed to reach his eyes.

"R-right. Um…just let me know when," she said nervously. "I'm really sorry if I caused any trouble. I just wasn't thinking straight after Ya— _Brian_. After what happened to Brian. I didn't think it would be a big deal if I kept a few of his things."

The perpetual wide smile didn't leave Jason's face. "No trouble at all, Ms. Corrigan. You and Ronan can go back to your work now."

Sarah exited the office quickly and made a beeline for the staircase. She was a few feet away when Ronan moved his body in between her and the door, forcing her to a stop.

"You know, I'm surprised at how quickly you gave it up," he said. At her shocked look he quickly added, "Your big secret, that is. I would've thought a girl like you would have a bit more shame about messing around with a coworker."

Her face grew hot, but she didn't know what she could say to defend herself that wouldn't blow her whole story. He grinned gleefully at her silence.

"Cat got your tongue? Guess there's not much you can say about a decision as poor as sleeping with _Yates_ , of all people. But I get it. I know how women work. All hormones and emotions, gets your brain all out of sorts."

Unexpectedly, he lazily reached out and trailed his fingers down her arm, making her hair stand on end. She quickly yanked her arm away and took a step back.

" _Don't_ …touch me," she said icily, meeting his beady eyes as evenly as she could.

Ronan didn't look offended or angry. Disturbingly, his smile widened at her words.

"How many men at this company have you played that game with before, Sarah?"

Her eyes narrowed, and she could hear her heart racing in her ears. "I'm serious, Ronan."

"I'm sure you are," he said mockingly, and with a last leer, he turned and headed towards the elevator.

Sarah stared at his retreating back, a sick feeling in her stomach. Playing along with his misconception about her and Yates had been her only option, and it had gotten her off of Jason's immediate radar—for the time being, at least. Who knew how their ominous meeting next week would go? But the lie had gotten her out of the immediate danger in that office. Now she had to wonder if it had caused more problems than it had solved.

~*~*~*~*~

Matt didn't stop by that night, which was unusual, but Sarah wasn't complaining. She still wasn't sure how she was going to explain to him that she had already almost gotten caught. None of it would give Jason reason to suspect any connection to Daredevil, but he was definitely suspicious of her. Yates must have known something before he died, and Jason was clearly trying to figure out if he had told her whatever it was. And that kind of scrutiny was not what she and Matt needed to add to an already stressful arrangement.

Around eleven, Sarah finally decided that Matt wasn't going to show up that night. Relieved, she slipped into her pajamas and got into bed, fairly confident that no knock would come at her window.

Her sleep came in short, restless intervals, interrupted by disturbing flashes of her coworkers and their heartless smiles. About an hour after she finally sank into real sleep, shortly past 2:30 am, the shrill ringing of her cell phone woke her up again.

It took one or two rings to rouse her from her sleep. She slapped her hand around on her nightstand before she found the phone, and squinted her eyes against the overly bright screen in the dark. The tiny devil Emoji grinned at her wickedly from the incoming call screen. She scowled. _I really need to change that_ , she thought as she fumbled for the answer button.

"Hello?" she mumbled sleepily, unable to hide the grumpiness in her tone. Why on earth was Matt calling her this late?

"Is this Sarah?" said an unfamiliar male voice. Whoever it was sounded frantic and out of breath.

Sarah sat up straight as adrenaline quickly cut through her drowsiness. She didn't respond to the mystery person's question. Who could possibly be calling her from Matt's burner phone? No one else knew about her connection to Daredevil, as far as she knew. She debated hanging up.

"Hello?" the voice said desperately when she didn't answer.

"Who is this?" she asked, the suspicion in her voice partially masked by the rasp of sleep.

"This is Foggy—um, Foggy Nelson. I'm friends with Matt. I think—I think you know who I am, right? Just—listen, I don't have anyone else to call. Claire's out of town, and—and I need your help. Matt's really hurt."

Sarah sat in speechless confusion for several long seconds as her sleep deprived brain tried to catch up with his words. "I—what?"

"I know we've never met, and you and Matt aren't exactly best friends. But he is _my_ best friend, and he's hurt. Badly. And I don't exactly have a lot of options for people I can call, here. Please, you have to come help," he implored desperately.

"What—what happened? Where are you?" she asked, clumsily trying to untangle her legs from the sheets while holding the phone to her ear with her shoulder.

"We're off of 45th, near the old textile factory. I don't really know what happened, but his legs are trapped under some kind of…collapsed scaffolding. It's not crushing them, but they're stuck. And it looks like someone slashed him really bad near his shoulder. He's bleeding through this stupid, knock-off Under Armour shirt he has on, and he's out cold. A-and I can't get him out from under this thing and back to his apartment on my own without being seen."

"Wha—so you want _me_ to come help?" she asked incredulously. "Don't you have someone who—who's better equipped to help with something like this? Anyone else?"

"There's only one other person who knows his identity, and she can't come!" Foggy said, clearly frustrated. " _Please_. I wouldn't be calling you if I didn't have to. I'm scared he's going to bleed out under this thing and I can't exactly call an ambulance."

"I…yeah," she said finally, fumbling for the switch on her bedside lamp. "Okay. Factory on 45th. I'm coming now."

"Thank you! Hurry."

Sarah dropped her phone onto the bed and pressed the palms her hands to her eyes for a second, still not fully comprehending what was happening. After a few seconds, she stood and stumbled over to her dresser. Yanking one of the drawers open, she grabbed a hooded sweatshirt and threw it on over the cotton shorts and tank top she had worn to bed. She fumbled under her bed for the sneakers she knew were under there somewhere.

As she laced up the sneakers, her mind woke up enough to consider the option that this might be some sort of trap. She hesitated, but then uneasily dismissed the thought. Even if someone from Orion knew she was working with Daredevil, she didn't pose a big enough threat for anyone to go to all the trouble of luring her out of her apartment, when they could easily just break in. All the same, she grabbed her stun gun out of her nightstand.

She started towards the front door, then stopped and spun around. Hurrying back to her room, she grabbed her backpack from the floor of her closet, shoving the stun gun and a flashlight inside before darting into the bathroom to grab the first aid kit under her sink. It had only the most basic supplies, but she assumed (hoped) that Matt would have a more comprehensive kit, given his nighttime activities. Zipping up the backpack, she slipped her cell phone into her pocket and grabbed her keys from her nightstand, and then she was out the door.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The location Foggy had given Sarah was only a few blocks from her apartment, so luckily she was able to get there on foot, her mind racing with doubts and questions the entire way there. Was she really about to show up at a sketchy factory in the middle of the night to help someone who had constantly threatened her since they first met? The guy who had pinned her to a wall by her throat when they first met, and followed her to her dad's house—and who knows where else—without her knowledge?

But despite the long list of reasons not to help, she had to admit that things had been slightly better between the two of them lately. Almost bordering on semi-friendly at a few points. Despite sometimes seeming otherwise, Matt was human, and he didn't deserve to bleed to death under a giant piece of metal somewhere. She thought of the voice on the other end of her phone: Foggy, the smiling guy from that Facebook photo she had found before Matt had tracked her down for the first time. She thought of how completely frantic he had sounded at the thought of losing Matt. He didn't sound like he deserved to watch his best friend bleed out, either, she supposed.

By the time Sarah arrived at her destination, she was completely out of breath, and had a searing stitch in her side. _I need to exercise more. Why do I even own these sneakers?_

"Shit," she hissed, clutching her side and trying to catch her breath as she approached the darkened, boarded up factory. Circling around the side of the building, she saw the collapsed scaffolding several yards ahead, partially hidden in shadows.

Sarah resisted the urge to loudly whisper a 'Hello?' as she approached the dark area. She had a sudden vision of the girls in a horror movie who always ventured into shadowy areas in their pajamas, holding something completely useless as a weapon, and timidly calling out 'Who's there?' before the machete-wielding killer appeared. She looked down at her own sweatshirt-covered pajamas and the small can of pepper spray in her hand, and winced at the parallels. _I am literally the dumb horror movie girl right now._

Keeping that uninspiring comparison in mind, Sarah kept her mouth shut and stuck close to the wall, staying in the shadows as she cautiously made her way over to where she hoped she would find Matt and his friend. She blindly bumped into something and jumped before squinting in the darkness and realizing it was just an old, rickety shopping cart full of empty cans and bottles.

When she finally got closer, she saw a vaguely familiar man with shaggy blonde hair kneeling over a figure lying on the ground, who sure enough was partially obscured by a large piece of the scaffolding. Sarah stepped out of the shadows next to the wall and cleared her throat awkwardly, not sure how to announce her presence. The blonde man looked up quickly at the sound. He seemed relieved to see her.

"Sarah?" he asked tentatively.

She nodded. "Yeah."

"I wasn't sure if you were going to come," he said.

"Neither was I," she said honestly. "You're, um, Foggy? Matt's friend?"

"That's me," he said as Sarah crouched down on the other side of the figure on the ground, who she could now clearly see was Matt in his masked costume. The vigilante was unconscious, and Foggy was using what looked like a sweatshirt to apply pressure to his upper chest and shoulder. "Best friend to someone who thinks he can just parkour his dumb ass around Hell's Kitchen and nothing like this will ever happen."

"How did you know he was here?"

"He called me; didn't pass out until a few minutes after I got here. Looks like he got into a pretty bad fight earlier, too. His legs are stuck under this thing. It doesn't look like the weight is actually on them, but the opening isn't big enough to slide him out without lifting it."

Sarah eyed the tangle of heavy-looking metal parts. "I—I don't know how much help I'm going to be able to offer as far as heavy lifting goes," she said doubtfully.

"You don't have to. It's heavy, but I can lift it on my own. I tried before. But I just—I can't keep it lifted and drag him out at the same time. I just need you to drag him out while I keep this thing off him. Okay?" Foggy said, looking at her hopefully.

"O-okay. Yeah," she said anxiously, crouching down next to the unconscious man. She hovered her hands over him, trying to figure out where she could get a grip without accidentally yanking on something broken or bleeding. Most of the left side of his shirt was wet with blood, but there were so many rips in his shirt that she couldn't pinpoint where the blood was coming from. She decided to avoid the area altogether, and finally settled on grabbing the upper part of his right arm, which appeared to be uninjured, and hoping that she wasn't making any of it worse.

"Ready?" Foggy said, glancing over at her from where he was getting ready to grab one of the metal bars attached to the slab.

Sarah looked down at Matt, seriously doubting her ability to move the much larger person. "Umm…yes?" she replied, trying to sound more confident in this plan than she was.

She crouched down over Matt, grabbing his arm and waiting. The metal groaned as Foggy slowly struggled to lift it up, and as soon as she saw it lift off Matt's legs, Sarah began trying to pull him out.

" _Dammit_ , this is heavy as hell," Foggy complained, his voice strained with the effort of lifting the heavy piece of scaffolding. "Why does the strongest person here have to be unconscious?"

Sarah was barely listening to him as she struggled to pull the masked man out from the wreckage. She knew that muscle was heavy, and Matt had a lot of it, but _good lord_ , he was hard to drag. The lack of safe, non-bleeding places to get a good grip on him didn't help the situation. Her fingers slipped several times as she inched his body out from under the scaffolding. Finally his feet were clear of the collapsed structure, and Foggy let go of the heavy weight.

"Shit," Foggy said breathlessly, bending over and putting his hands on his knees. "Okay. One part down. Now how are we supposed to get him back to his apartment?"

Sarah was also breathing heavily as she kneeled on the ground. Her hands were slick with blood from Matt's shirt, and she wiped them idly on her sweatshirt as she glanced around the area. In the past, stress and danger had always made her thoughts anxious and jumbled, so she was surprised to find that in this particular moment the adrenaline pumping through her veins somehow made her mind feel clearer.

"Hang on," she said, struggling back up to her feet. She backtracked a few yards in the shadows along the wall until she bumped into the shopping cart she had run into earlier, obscured from view of the scaffolding area. The wheels squeaked as she pulled it back over to where Foggy waited. He was finishing up tying the arms of the bloody sweatshirt around Matt's torso to keep the pressure applied more steadily, and he glanced up as she returned.

"A shopping cart?" he said doubtfully, standing and approaching the opposite side of the cart. "You want to wheel Matt through the streets like he's a bag of groceries?"

Sarah threw her hands up in exasperation. "I don't know! We can't carry him. Do you have a better idea?"

"Jesus. Well, we'll need something to cover him up, at least," he said, looking down into the cart. He yanked on the corner of some fabric that was sticking out from the recyclables, and after some tugging he produced a large, very dirty looking blanket, which he eyed skeptically. "This looks like it's full of diseases. It can't possibly be safe to put this on someone with open wounds."

Sarah shrugged helplessly. "I don't think we have a lot of other options. I mean, someone is definitely going to notice us pushing a full grown, heavily bleeding man through the streets in a shopping cart. And that's before they notice that he also happens to be the Devil of Hell's Kitchen."

"Point taken," he conceded. "Alright, let's just hurry up before whatever homeless person we're stealing this cart and blanket from comes back."

The two of them swiftly scooped the cans and bottles out of the cart, depositing them on the ground as quickly and quietly as they could, until the cart was empty. When they were done, they crouched down next to the unconscious vigilante, Sarah near his feet and Foggy near his much heavier torso, and slowly lifted him into the cart. He was much easier to lift with someone else helping, but it was still somewhat of a struggle.

Finally, Matt was awkwardly folded into the cart in a seated position, with his head leaning against the side. His odd positioning and lack of movement made him look dead, and Sarah could tell by the disturbed look on Foggy's face that he was thinking the same thing.

"Okay, let's, um…let's cover him up," she said. While Foggy grabbed the blanket, Sarah took a moment to glance down at her clothes; her sweatshirt was covered in dirt and smeared with blood, and her legs had several long scratches from the gravel and a few bits of metal she had been unable to avoid while dragging Matt.

"Sorry, buddy," Foggy said, wincing as he covered his friend with the blanket. It was dirty, but effective; it was impossible to tell that the odd shape under the blanket was a person and not just a pile of random items.

"How far away is his apartment?"

"Not too far. A few blocks that way," he said, pointing in the opposite direction of her own apartment.

They steadily made their way through the streets, Foggy pushing the undoubtedly heavy cart while Sarah hurried along next to him, helping guide the cart with one hand while clutching her bloodstained sweatshirt tighter around herself with the other. She glanced around nervously every few minutes. If for any reason a cop saw them, they were definitely screwed, because they looked incredibly out of place.

"We're lucky no one is around, because you are acting so suspicious right now," Foggy whispered at her pointedly. "Can you just—act normal?"

"Normal?" she retorted defensively. "I am helping push a passed out vigilante around Hell's Kitchen in a stolen shopping cart at three in the morning. With a stranger. In my pajamas. This is the least normal thing I have _ever_ done."

"Alright, alright, fair point. But can you just stop looking around every other second like the FBI is going to drop down on us?"

"Sorry, sorry."

She was relieved when they turned the corner and Foggy pointed towards a building up ahead. The spring weather had steadily been getting warmer over the past month, but she had forgotten that the nights were still chilly, and she wished she had thrown on some sweatpants over her shorts.

"What floor is he on? Please say something low."

"No such luck. Top floor. Needed the roof access. But there's an elevator, and we shouldn't run into anyone else on there this late. If we do, at least it just looks like we stole a homeless person's cart full of recyclables from them. Which is not great," Foggy said, frowning. "But it's less illegal than what we're actually doing."

The warmth of the building's run down (and thankfully empty) lobby was welcome. Sarah and Foggy crowded into the elevator, one on either side of the shopping cart. They stood in the cramped space as the elevator ascended, both of them fully illuminated for the first time that night. She glanced over at Foggy to see him giving her an appraising look and shaking his head.

"I knew it," he said under his breath, presumably to himself.

"What?" Sarah asked, confused.

"Nothing. I was just right about something," he said. He threw a dirty look at the blanket-covered man in the shopping cart. "Murdock, you predictable son of a bitch."

Sarah squinted at him suspiciously, but she was too tired to figure out—or care about—what he meant.

Foggy took the blanket off Matt as soon as the door to the apartment was closed and locked behind them, then he guided the cart over towards the couch. Wordlessly, Sarah grabbed Matt's legs again while Foggy took his upper half, and they heaved him onto the couch. The masked man made a low groaning noise, but didn't wake up. Sarah felt slightly relieved to hear him make any noise at all; at least he was definitely alive.

Foggy was busy inserting another key into a padlock on a pair of metal double doors near the staircase. When he opened them, she saw a large trunk on the floor, which Foggy reached behind to procure a large duffle bag. She assumed that was Matt's first aid kit, and was relieved to see that it was much larger than the one she had in her backpack.

"Okay," Foggy said, dropping the bag next to the couch and kneeling next to Matt. He looked lost as to where to begin. "So…is there any chance that before you were a double agent secretary, you were something conveniently medical, like a nurse, or a…surgeon? EMT, maybe?" he asked hopefully.

"Um…I was a pianist."

"Wow. That is _extremely_ unhelpful to this situation."

"Well, you know, this wasn't really one of my career goals," she said distractedly, as she searched through the bag for disinfectant wipes. She found a pack near the bottom and pulled out a few for herself and a couple for Foggy. "But I do know enough to know that we should probably use these before touching him, since we just touched a bunch of old beer cans and a homeless person's shopping cart."

"Fair enough," he said. After cleaning his hands, he reached for Matt's mask and gently peeled it up and off of his face. Sarah's eyes widened when she saw the amount of dried blood covering the upper half of his face. It looked like it had come from a cut just below his hairline.

"Jesus," Foggy breathed out shakily.

"I—I think maybe it looks worse than it is," Sarah said hesitantly. "Head wounds bleed a lot, right? Even if they're small. And it looks like it's stopped now."

Foggy nodded, but didn't look convinced. "Yeah. Yeah, good point. Okay, uh, we need to get his shirt off so we can get a look at his shoulder. Can you get his left side?"

Sarah stared at him wide-eyed for a second, then back down at Matt. "Um…right. Yeah." _That won't be weird at all._

Getting the tight black shirt off proved to be something of a struggle, with Matt as dead weight. His right side went easily enough, but the left side—the injured side—was a slow process. He groaned lowly as the two of them slowly manipulated his arm through the sleeve, but he didn't wake up. Sarah's hands and forearms were smeared with blood by the time they got his shirt off, and Foggy's looked the same.

Sarah winced as she took in the sight. Matt had a long, messy looking gash extending from over his shoulder down to just below his collarbone on his left side. The bleeding had slowed to a near stop, but the opening was still wide and ragged.

"What the hell do you think even makes a cut like that?"

"Something serrated, maybe," she said, cringing and averting her eyes from the jagged wound.

"Do you know how to do stitches?" Foggy asked her hopefully.

"Me? No. Don't you? You're the one with a best friend who fights crime with his bare hands at night. This can't possibly be the first time he's needed them."

"Definitely not the first time," Foggy said, wincing. "But usually one of us calls Claire. And then she comes and does her nurse thing and fixes him up. But she's not answering her phone. I think she's out of town again."

"What, he doesn't he have like a—a backup nurse?"

Foggy looked at her. "A _backup nurse?_ That's…actually…that does kind of sounds like something he would do," he admitted, shaking his head at his friend. "Have not just _one_ hot nurse on call, but two. But he doesn't, as far as I know."

"Well, then what do you want to do?"

He looked down at the cut contemplatively. "I think we should just bandage it up as best we can, to make sure it doesn't start bleeding too much again. And then when he wakes up he can tell us what to do."

Sarah nodded and exhaled shakily. "Alright. Um…I guess we should try to clean him up before putting any bandages on?"

"Yeah. There's, uh, there's some washcloths in the bathroom. It's that way. If you can grab them and put some warm water and soap on them, I'm going to try to call Claire again and hope she answers. See if she has any advice."

Sarah stood and walked in the direction he had pointed. The bathroom, like most of the apartment, was fairly empty. Before touching anything, she quickly scrubbed as much of the blood off her hands as she could, studiously avoiding her own reflection in the mirror. She found the towels in a cabinet above the toilet, and grabbed two of the washcloths to run under the warm water flowing out of the faucet. She pumped some of the hand soap onto the towels, noting idly that it was unscented. Before leaving the room, she grabbed one of the larger towels from the cabinet as well, just in case.

She returned to the living room in time to see Foggy hanging up Matt's burner phone. He turned when she came in the room.

"Okay. Claire's out of town, like I thought, but she finally answered her phone," Foggy said. "I told her what was going on. He's not too pale or really cold, which she said is a good sign as far as blood loss goes. She also said that between the cut on his head and the fact that he's unconscious, he probably has a concussion. But he's had those before. It's the big gash that she said we should worry about. We might make it worse if we try to stitch it up without knowing what we're doing. She said Matt will probably be able to show me how to do it properly when he wakes up."

"Okay," she said slowly. "Okay, well, that's good, then. Right?"

"Yeah. It's good," he said, sounding relieved. "Thank God it's not any worse, because I don't know if you've noticed, but we don't know what the hell we're doing."

"I did notice that," she said tiredly, handing him one of the washcloths. "I'm sorry there was no one better you could call."

Foggy shrugged. "Hey, you showed up. I can't ask for much more than that from a total stranger. I'll start with the cut on his face, if you don't mind starting on the big one."

Sarah nodded, and watched as he slowly began wiping the dirt and blood off his friend's face. He did so very gently, tracing the washcloth over Matt's forehead with a tight, worried look on his face. She wondered how long the two of them had been friends.

Looking away from the oddly intimate sight, she perched on the arm of the couch and inspected Matt's shoulder. She wondered again what could have made a cut like that; it was long and jagged, snaking around his shoulder and down his chest. Slowly she began dabbing at blood around the wound, too nervous to actually get too close to the cut itself.

"Do you think he's going to be pissed that I know where he lives now?" Sarah asked quietly as she worked on the wound.

Foggy looked up at her. "I…hadn't really thought about that. I guess he never mentioned to you where his place was?"

She shook her head with a disbelieving laugh. "You really think he's going to tell _me_ where he lives? I don't think he would trust me enough to tell me his middle name, much less his address."

Foggy looked like he was mentally kicking himself. "Well…it's too late now, I guess."

"You didn't know I'd never been here when you called me?"

"I don't really know much at all about, you know…whatever you guys do. Your whole espionage thing," Foggy elaborated, gesturing from her to Matt. "Mostly, I just imagine the two of you meeting in a café somewhere, but you're sitting back to back at different tables, wearing sunglasses and big hats."

Sarah laughed slightly despite herself. "Really? The man literally wears a masked costume, but the disguise you imagine him in is sunglasses and a big hat?"

"I'm sorry that I'm not as schooled in the art of spying and surveillance as the two of you apparently are," Foggy said defensively. "And anyway, he usually already has the sunglasses on, so it'd be easier."

"Fair enough," she said, shaking her head. "But that's…not really how it goes. It's more like him sometimes knocking on my window late at night, and then me telling him what I know. Which is usually boring stuff about paperwork. Sometimes there are threats. From his side, that is. Well, sometimes me, lately. And, um…then he leaves. That's about it."

"That's much less exciting. I'm going to continue imagining it the way I was," he informed her.

"That's fine. It would probably be more fun if it really happened that way," Sarah acknowledged. She fiddled with the washcloth in her hands. "So, he doesn't talk to you about…this whole thing?"

"A few times. When I've asked," Foggy conceded. "But…I'm still kind of getting used to the whole costumed, crime-fighting part of his life in general. I mean, it comes up, because sometimes he comes to work looking like he lost a fight with a pack of bears or something. And for a guy with a secret identity, Matt kind of sucks at lying, so I sometimes have to help him with his cover stories. But mostly we just talk about…you know, normal stuff. I think he likes to keep the two sides of his life pretty separate. I mean, I assume you guys don't spend a lot of time talking much about me either, right?"

"You? Christ, no. The one time I mentioned _your_ name, he almost choked me to death. So, no…I don't really bring you up. Ever. Actually, he might murder me just for talking to you right now, I think," she said, frowning at the unconscious vigilante.

Foggy gave her a strange look.

"What?" she said uncomfortably.

"Nothing. I just…you're really afraid of him," Foggy said uncertainly. "Of Matt."

She opened and closed her mouth, unsure of how to answer. "Well—I…sometimes. I mean, less than I used to be, I guess. He's alright when he's like…in a well lit room, and not in my personal space. He can be _almost_ friendly sometimes. But then the next thing I know, he's threatening me in an alleyway somewhere. Which would be scary enough with a normal person, but Matt could probably kill me before I could blink. And about half the time it kind of seems like he wants to. So…I wouldn't say that I'm _not_ scared of him."

"So…why did you come help him tonight?"

Sarah shrugged uncomfortably. "I don't know. You sounded really desperate, I guess. And I make weird decisions when people wake me up in the middle of the night. And—and besides, there's a difference between being scared of someone and just…letting them _die_. It's not like I hate him."

Foggy didn't respond for a while as he busied himself applying a small bandage to the cut on Matt's face.

"He really is trying to do the right thing," he said after a while. "I don't know about the way he's doing it, but…he's trying to protect his friends."

"I never threatened his friends," she said quietly.

"No, I get that. But you just kind of came out of nowhere. He let his identity slip in just the dumbest, simplest way possible. And it just happened to be to someone who _really_ shouldn't know. You can't blame him for, you know…overreacting a bit. He didn't have much reason not to. For all he knew, you could be a crazy person."

"Is that what you think?" she asked.

Foggy was finished with Matt's face and moved over to help her with the cut on his chest. She was relieved; she really didn't want to deal with the shredded skin surrounding the deepest parts of the cut.

"Well, I'm on the fence," Foggy said. "I mean, before tonight, all I knew about you is that you work for evil people, and you refuse to quit. You recently met one of the most feared people in Hell's Kitchen, and you…agreed to spy for him. Actually, scratch that, you _suggested_ spying for him. So, right off the bat, I don't really understand your idea of, you know…safe, non-crazy-pants type decisions."

Sarah frowned begrudgingly. She couldn't really argue with that. 

"That being said," he continued, "It's not like crazy is new to me. My best friend dresses up in a mask and runs around beating people up at night. It's really the kind of crazy you are that makes a difference here." 

She handed him some gauze to put over the now clean wound on Matt's shoulder. He clumsily taped the gauze down, and began to unravel a long bandage he found in the first aid bag. 

"So, what kind of crazy am I?" 

"Well, you and Matt are…not friends. That's pretty clear. And yet, you still got your ass out of bed at two thirty in the morning and came to some random factory to help him. In your pajamas, no less. So that doesn't make you seem… _especially_ sane. But you helped me save my best friend, when you could just as easily have let him die. So in my book, whatever kind of crazy you are is alright. If nothing else, I'd say you've got a friend in Foggy Nelson, at least," he said, grinning at her. 

"You know, you're much friendlier to meet for the first time than Matt was," she noted, returning the smile hesitantly. 

"Yeah, but Matt's an idiot," Foggy said affectionately as he glanced down at his friend. "You scare him, too, you know. In a different way. Not that fear ever seems to stop him. He's always doing things that a normal, sane person would be too scared to do. I don't get it. I've come to accept it. But I don't get it." 

"I don't know. I guess you can't just _not_ do something because it's scary or crazy," Sarah said. "No one would ever get anything done if they let that stuff get in the way." 

"Now you sound like Matt," Foggy pointed out. "He's always talking about not giving into the fear and whatnot. Always picks the most _annoying_ times to start quoting Thurgood Marshall." 

"Really?" 

"Yeah. What, he doesn't do that while running around exchanging secret documents with you?" 

Sarah tilted her head as she thought through their encounters. "Um…did Thurgood Marshall ever have any quotes along the lines of 'Do what I say or I'll break your arm'? Because if so, then yeah, he does." 

Foggy looked at her for a long moment before he slowly shook his head, frowning. "It's so weird to hear you talk about him like that. You know, Matt's usually really charming with the ladies." 

"This—this Matt?" she said doubtfully, waving her hands over the bloody man stretched out on the couch. "This one right here? Are you sure?" 

"Yes!" Foggy exclaimed. "Back when we were in law school, I remember being so jealous of him. He always had girls lining up to, you know, guide him to class, or help him study. Like he needed help with any of that. Even before I knew about all his weird super senses, I knew he didn't need help with that stuff. Lucky bastard." 

Sarah dropped her gaze back down to the unconscious vigilante. This was the first time she had ever seen his face unobscured by a mask or dark sunglasses. He looked younger without anything to hide behind, and it occurred to her that she had no idea how old he was. He was obviously handsome, and she supposed that had she met him in another time, she might have been one of those girls Foggy talked about. His crime fighting obviously kept him in shape, but the effect was kind of ruined for her when he spent so much of his time using that strength to intimidate her. 

"I can see that, I guess. I just…never really see that side of him." 

"Yeah, I guess he wouldn't really be putting the moves on you, huh?" Foggy said thoughtfully. 

"If you mean crazy ninja moves, then the answer is yes, sometimes, and it's very scary." 

Foggy was quiet for a while, looking at Matt. He looked deep in thought, and Sarah didn't interrupt him. 

"Did he really threaten to break your arm?" he asked suddenly, sounding sad and uncertain. Sarah suddenly felt slightly guilty for the offhanded comments she had made about his friend's violent side. It wasn't Foggy's fault that Matt had some temper problems. 

"Well—I—I mean…it was something like that," she said, trying to backtrack and downplay it somewhat. "And it was the night that he thought I was about to turn him into the police. He's not always that…straightforward with his threats." 

"Right," Foggy said, nodding. "I saw you for about a split second that night. When you were mysteriously hauling ass out of the police station. I guess that explains why he was all weird and moody after he got back from chasing after you. Probably some Catholic guilt thing." 

"He's Catholic?" Sarah said, surprised. He didn't seem like the religious type. Then again, she didn't really know him well enough to say. 

Foggy grinned weakly at her. "You really don't know anything about him, do you?" 

"Not really. Not about the Matt that you know, at least. I mean, to you, he's like this—this blind lawyer guy who sometimes wears a vigilante costume. And to me, he's this _very_ confusing vigilante who…sometimes wears a lawyer costume." 

The subject of lawyers seemed to trigger something in Foggy's brain, and he quickly checked his watch. 

" _Shit_. I forgot what day it was. Matt and I are supposed to be in court in…three hours. Great." 

Sarah raised her eyebrows. "Can you reschedule? Because I really don't think he's going to be much help in the courtroom right now." 

"Not with this judge. He's really strict; there's no way he'll let me petition for a change of date on such short notice. And I really don't think he's going to be amused if I try to pull a Weekend at Bernie's with this…bonehead," he said, gesturing irately towards the still unconscious Matt. 

"Well, what happens if you don't show up?" 

"Default judgment. Basically we lose the case. And it's this really awful custody case, too. The father's a total psycho, and he's suing his ex-wife for custody of their kids. Not even because he wants them, just because…he _can_. He makes way more money than her, and if one of us doesn't show up today, he'll definitely get custody." Foggy sounded completely defeated. 

Sarah felt a twist of sympathy in her chest, for both the mother of the children and the overwhelmed lawyer sitting in front of her. She bit her lip as she debated what to do. 

"So…go, then," she said finally. Foggy looked at her in confusion. "Go to court. Claire said he seems stable, right? There's not really much to do but watch him. I can…I can stay here. Go help your client." 

"What about your job? Are you even allowed to call in sick there?" 

"Um…not really. But you have court at what, seven? My job starts at nine. I can take part of the morning off without raising too many eyebrows," she lied. Her absence would almost definitely raise some eyebrows, especially the morning after her conversation with Ronan and Jason, but she could cross that bridge when she came to it. She'd come into work hungover twice now in the past month; it wouldn't be too unbelievable that she had drank too much the night before and slept through her alarm. 

"Matt _would_ definitely tell me to go if he were awake right now," Foggy said, staring contemplatively at his unconscious friend. He chewed his lip and shifted a conflicted gaze between Matt and Sarah. After a minute of consideration, he sighed. 

"You'll keep an eye on his bleeding?" 

"Yes." 

"You might have to change the bandages." 

"I can do that." 

"If something goes wrong, call Claire, and then call me." 

"I will." 

"Okay. I'll call his burner phone whenever I can to check up on how he's doing, alright?" 

"I'll keep an ear out," Sarah said, and Foggy slowly started to stand. Suddenly something occurred to her. "Wait, wait, what if he wakes up?" 

"That's a good thing," Foggy said slowly. "We _want_ him to wake up. I hope we're on the same page with that, because if not, I'm kinda a lot less crazy about leaving you alone with him." 

"Well, yeah," she amended. "Obviously I don't want him to _not_ wake up. I just mean…how's he going to react when he comes to and the first person he sees is, you know…not his favorite person?" 

"Well, first of all, he's not going to _see_ much of anything when he wakes up. Also, he has a giant, open wound, probably a concussion, and who knows what else. What do you think he's going to do to you? Bleed on your pajamas some more?" 

She cast a wary look over at the couch. Foggy had a point. The bloodied man laid out on the couch didn't much resemble the masked man who always managed to make her so nervous. 

"Yeah, I…okay. Point made," she said reluctantly. "Go home and shower. Bloody and dirty isn't a good courtroom look." 

"Actually, I was thinking I might try to rock it. You can wear anything if you do it with enough confidence," he informed her lightly, and she smiled at him tiredly 

"Good luck," she said. "I hope you win your case." 

"Thanks," he said, pausing as he put his hand on the doorknob and giving her a serious look. "And…thanks for staying with Matt. I know you're not comfortable around him. But he's a good guy, and I know he's going to appreciate all you've done tonight." 

Sarah glanced at Matt doubtfully, then back at Foggy. "If you say so." 

"Take care of him," Foggy said to her, before pointing his finger at the Matt's passed out form and addressing the unconscious man. "I'll call and check in on you as soon as I can, buddy." 

With that, he closed the door softly behind him, leaving Sarah and the injured vigilante alone in the sparse apartment. 


	9. Mending

It wasn't until Foggy was gone and the apartment was silent that the excessive strangeness of the night really set it. Sarah glanced around, taking a moment to fully comprehend that she was in Matt Murdock's apartment—in _Daredevil's_ apartment—a place she never thought she'd see. In fact, she had never really thought about where he lived at all. After a while of sitting in the chair, her adrenaline faded and the exhaustion caught up to her. She realized she needed to move around or she would fall asleep, so she slowly stood and paced around the living room area, inspecting various areas of the room and occasionally throwing a nervous glance back at the unconscious man to make sure he wasn't awake. He probably wouldn't appreciate her nosing around his place, but it's not like there was much else for her to do.

Matt had no real decorations, which she guessed made sense; she wasn't sure how advanced his weird abilities were, but even he probably couldn't see paintings. Sarah spent so much time interacting with him as his Daredevil persona that she sometimes forgot the man behind the mask really was blind. But sure enough, his apartment was spotted with reminders: his white cane leaning against the wall next to the door, the lack of a television or any wall hangings, a bookshelf full of Braille translations and audiobooks. The most glaring sign that the apartment's resident had no sight was, quite literally, a glaring sign: a giant flashing billboard outside his window, which made the living room brighten and darken like a nightclub. No sane person with working eyes would be able to live here; at least not without some heavy duty curtains.

Sarah was careful not to touch anything, save for one of the Braille books on the bookshelf. She flipped through it curiously, having never really seen a Braille book up close before. As she was putting the book back on the shelf, Matt's burner phone rang. Hurrying back over to where it rested on the coffee table, she picked it up and answered hesitantly.

"Hey," Foggy's voice came through the line, more familiar this time than the last. "How is he?"

"About the same," she said, settling back into the armchair. "He's still out, but his breathing and pulse are fine, and the bleeding hasn't started again."

"Good, good."

She glanced around the room for a clock, but didn't see one. _Obviously,_ she reminded herself. She pulled the phone away from her ear for a second to check the time: 6:15 am.

"You getting ready for court?"

"Yeah, I'm at the courthouse now. I've never done a case without Matt, though. Kinda nervous, to be honest."

"I'm sure you'll do fine," Sarah reassured him automatically. In reality, she had no idea if Foggy was a good lawyer or not, but it seemed like the polite thing to say. "Are they going to ask why he isn't there?"

"Probably. But, you know, blind guy. I can just say he walked in front of a bike messenger, or something, and they'll feel bad and not bring it up again."

Sarah gave a brief, tired smile at that. "Good plan. I'll let you know if anything changes here."

"Oh, wait!" Foggy said. "I was calling because you should put a blanket on him."

"What?"

"The last time he was super out of it, he got really cold from the blood loss. Just go in his room and grab a blanket and throw it over him, okay?"

She glanced at the doorway to Matt's bedroom warily. Being in his apartment without his knowledge was one thing, but something about going into his bedroom seemed just a bit too far. But Foggy clearly sounded concerned about the issue, and it made sense.

"Okay," she said reluctantly. "I'll grab him one."

"Also, I don't know how fond you are of the whole serial killer aesthetic, but if you're looking for something to wear that's not, you know, covered in blood, you can grab a shirt out of the bottom drawer of his dresser. He won't care; half of them are mine, anyway."

Sarah wondered briefly if maybe Foggy was actually the crazy one. There wasn't the slightest chance on earth she was about to go digging through Matt Murdock's dresser, much less actually wear something she found in there. She had a feeling she would have a hard enough time explaining why she was even there without also having to explain why she was wearing his clothes.

"Um…I'll think about that. Anything else?" she asked.

"Nope. Just that if he wakes up, tell him he's an idiot for me."

"Tell the unstable vigilante that he's an idiot?" Sarah repeated doubtfully, casting a wary eye over at Matt. "I kind of feel like this whole phone call is you trying to get me killed."

"Alright, alright, I'll tell him that myself. I gotta go now, court's starting soon."

"Good luck."

As Sarah hung up the phone, she reluctantly stood to go get a blanket from Matt's bedroom. She felt for the light switch on the wall, hoping that he had some sort of working light in his room. Blind people still needed to have lights for their visitors, right? She finally found it and clicked the light on. His bedroom was just as sparse as the living room. She immediately spotted a blanket folded up at the end of his bed. As she grabbed it, she raised her eyebrows at his choice in bedding. _Silk sheets. Would not have predicted that._

Sarah hurried out his bedroom with the blanket it hand, still feeling oddly intrusive about being in there. As she draped the blanket over Matt, she took the opportunity to study his face—something she had never had the chance to really do before tonight. It always bothered her that he could read her so easily while not being able to see her at all, while she usually had to try to guess what he was thinking based on just the bottom half of his face. She'd seen him in his day attire a few times, but even then, the dark sunglasses were almost as good at hiding his expression as the mask was.

But now, his face was exposed and oddly vulnerable. It crossed her mind yet again that he looked young; maybe in his late twenties, like her. Sarah wasn't sure why she had assumed he was older than she was. Being a vigilante just seemed like something that someone her age wasn't old enough to do. Then again, she felt the same way about Lauren getting married and having a child, so maybe she was just trailing behind her peers.

The long cut on Matt's forehead had stopped bleeding, and Foggy had applied a small bandage to keep it closed. He had a busted lip, and a scrape on his jaw. The beginning of a dark bruise was starting to bloom under his right eye. He had numerous smaller injuries littering his arms and torso as well, which she had seen before covering them with the blanket: small cuts, scrapes and bruises in various stages of healing. Sarah wondered briefly how often he looked like this when he dropped by her place, and she just couldn't tell through the costume and the mask.

The contrast between the man on the couch and the vigilante who regularly showed up at her apartment in the middle of the night was strange and unbalancing. Sarah shook her head, trying not to think about it too much. She was running on only a couple hours of sleep, and her thought process wasn't exactly at its peak. Looking for something to distract her from the exhaustion, she made her way into the bathroom to clean herself up.

When she finally looked in the bathroom mirror, Sarah frowned at the image. Foggy hadn't been kidding about the serial killer aesthetic. The entire front of her light blue sweatshirt was covered in blood and dirt; there was no way all of that was going to come out. She still had dark streaks left on her arms, despite having tried to wash it all off earlier. There was a smudge of red on her forehead as well, from where she must have unintentionally used a bloodstained hand to push the hair out of her face.

Seeing all of the blood under the bright bathroom light somehow made her more aware of it, and Sarah finally registered the sickening coppery smell coming from her clothes. She wrinkled her nose and quickly unzipped the sweatshirt, peeling it off and throwing it on the counter. Without the sweatshirt, she looked noticeably less gory: the tank top and shorts she was wearing as pajamas still had some spots of blood from where it had soaked through the outer layer, but it was a definite improvement. She scrubbed the blood and dirt off of her hands and face as best she could, watching the dirty water swirl down the drain. Finally, she splashed some water on her face to keep herself awake before taking a last glance in the mirror and exiting the bathroom.

Sarah ran a hand through her hair tiredly as she came back out into the living room, then glanced over at the couch. She stopped dead as her eyes landed on the empty cushions where Matt's unconscious body had just been. He wasn't there.

_Shit. Not good._

She barely had a few seconds to register that he wasn't where she had left him before she felt a strong hand grab her arm and yank her backwards, towards a doorway where Matt had been standing just out of sight. He roughly pushed her against the door frame, holding her in place with a vice-like grip on her shoulder. His left arm—the injured one—hung at a painful looking angle, and he swayed slightly on the spot.

"What are you doing in my apartment?" he demanded hoarsely.

Sarah's eyes widened at the edge of panic and confusion in his normally even voice. Clearly Foggy had been right about the concussion, which was not good. A disoriented and on-edge Matt was a dangerous Matt: slightly less intimidating, but much more unpredictable. And that was really not something she wanted to deal with right now, no matter what state he was in physically. She licked her lips nervously as she kept her eyes trained on his face, watching him warily for signs of that the tightly coiled tension in his body was about to snap.

"Whoa, whoa. Hey. Calm—calm down," she said shakily, trying to keep her voice low as she looked up at him apprehensively. "I'm here to help you."

Matt was breathing heavily with the effort of standing, and it seemed like he was having difficulty focusing on what she was saying. His eyes darted around her general direction, as though he couldn't pinpoint exactly where her voice was coming from. She could see the blood seeping through the bandage on his torso, where he had clearly already re-opened the wound with his movements.

"Where…where's Foggy?"

"Foggy is fine," she said quickly. "He had to go to court. For your—your custody case. Remember that? He'll be back soon."

Matt furrowed his brow and hesitated, suspicion and confusion lingering on his face. Sarah took advantage of his lack of focus to slowly inch to the right, trying to slip out from under his grasp on her shoulder. She hoped that he was too out of it to notice, but there was no such luck. He immediately tightened his hold and shoved her back against the doorframe harder. His face paled slightly at the effort it took, making it even more obvious that he wasn't at full strength. Sarah knew from experience how much his grip could hurt when he wanted it to, and this was nowhere near that level. But Matt at minimal strength was still a lot stronger than she was, and she winced at the impact of her back hitting the hard doorframe.

"Stay there," Matt said through gritted teeth, bowing his head for a moment as a wave of dizziness clearly washed over him. He swayed harder, although his grip didn't loosen. "What—I don't…what's going on? Why are you here?"

_Good question, Matt. Maybe because I'm stupid._

"Okay, I'll—I'll explain all of that, but—Matt, y-you're hurt. You really need to lie back down," Sarah said pleadingly. She held a hand out in front of her in a placating gesture, realizing too late that in his disorientated mental state he might interpret it as a threatening motion. His left hand came up lightning fast to grab her wrist, quickly trapping it in a painful hold. He grimaced as the sudden movement caused his injured shoulder to shift, and though his grip was strong, his hand was shaking slightly.

"Wait, wait, wait," she exclaimed, but the sudden outburst just made him clutch her wrist even harder as his jaw twitched in agitation. She bit the inside of her cheek and kept as still as possible, trying not to startle him. He was clearly having difficulty determining what was a threat and what wasn't, and she was worried that if he got too far from reality he would easily snap her wrist with one good twist.

"Don't…don't do that," she tried again nervously, this time in a much lower voice. "Please. I'm not trying to hurt you." The words sounded almost comically ridiculous coming from her, as his much larger frame towered over her. "I'm—I'm trying to help you. And….you're going to pass out again i-if we don't get you back on the couch. Okay?"

There was silence except for Matt's labored breathing, but the color was steadily draining from his face, and she knew he couldn't deny what she was saying for much longer. She remained frozen in place as she waited for him to respond, feeling vaguely like she was waiting to see if a bomb would go off. Finally, he nodded his head jerkily in assent and slowly released her wrist, although he kept his tight grip on her shoulder. She suspected that by this point it was mostly to keep his own balance.

"I'm—I'm going to help you get back over there. Just… _please_ don't freak out on me…okay?" Sarah said, still keeping her voice as quiet and calming as she could. Matt didn't respond, tilting his head down again as he swayed heavily to the side.

She slowly reached out a hand to steady him, holding her breath nervously as she did so. She hoped it wouldn't trigger any instinctual violent response in the clearly tightly wound vigilante. Matt tensed at her touch, but didn't recoil or make any move towards her. She wasn't sure if the lack of response was a good thing, or if it just meant that he was even more strung out than before. Either way, she needed to get him back to the couch. Blood was slowly trickling out of the bandage on his shoulder, running down his chest in small rivulets. He didn't seem to notice.

"Okay," she muttered, keeping one hand on Matt's waist and bringing the other up to gingerly grasp his uninjured arm, which was still extended towards her as he held onto her shoulder. Slowly she stepped to the left, towards the couch, and he stumbled along with her. "This should be…super fun…"

Without the support of the bedroom doorway behind her, Matt's full weight leaning on Sarah's shoulder was much heavier. Clearly he had used up the last of his energy getting off the couch and over to the doorway in record ninja time, so the trip back was much slower. They took it one small, unsteady step at a time, with Sarah keeping a wary eye on his face and quietly continuing to remind him that she was trying to help, that they were almost back to the couch where he could lie down. He gave no indication that he could hear her, but she kept it up anyway, if only to reassure herself.

As they reached the sitting area, Sarah tripped over one of the large combat boots that Foggy had removed from Matt's feet and hastily discarded earlier. She stumbled, throwing them both off balance, and Matt gripped her shoulder painfully hard as they both tried to regain their balance. She hissed through her teeth as his nails dug into the skin on her shoulder, hard. They finally made it to the couch and he fell back onto it heavily, letting his head fall back against the back of the couch. Sarah dug around in the bag for more gauze, frowning at the sheen of sweat covering Matt's forehead. His eyes were closed; it looked like maybe he had passed out again.

She found the gauze and kneeled on the couch next to him. He was slumped in a sitting position, making the angle to work on the wound slightly less awkward than when he had been lying down. She discarded the blood soaked bandage and pressed the fresh gauze to the freely bleeding wound on the front of his shoulder. Matt didn't move, which didn't seem like a good sign, but his breathing was slowly returning to normal.

She kept pressure on the wound for about ten minutes, during which he gave no signs of being awake, or even of being alive, beyond the steady rise and fall of his chest. When it seemed like she had managed to stem the flow of blood, she awkwardly taped the gauze down like she had seen Foggy do earlier. Sitting back, she rubbed her wrist and frowned in dismay at the fact that even in his current state of bleeding half to death, he still found the energy to knock her into a doorway or two. She hoped when he woke up again he'd be lucid enough to let her explain what was going on without attacking her.

"Gosh, Sarah, thanks for saving my ass," she muttered to herself resentfully as she threw the gauze and tape back into the bag with a little more force than strictly necessary. "I promise not to be super scary and push you around anymore."

"I can hear you," Matt said quietly, with his eyes still closed. Sarah looked up in surprise, automatically leaning away from him. She could feel her face heating up in embarrassment.

"I…thought you were unconscious again," she admitted.

"I was. Just woke up," he said, then groaned as he sat up a bit more. Seeing that he was again capable of movement, Sarah slowly stood and moved to the nearby armchair, where she perched uneasily on the armrest, ready to retreat farther if necessary.

"Are you…feeling less violent now?" she asked hopefully.

"Where's Foggy?" he asked instead of answering her question.

Sarah crinkled her brow in concern. "You don't remember us talking about this?"

Matt hesitated, then shook his head. "Not really. Just…bit and pieces."

He still seemed disoriented, but he was much calmer now, although Sarah suspected it might just be the exhaustion from standing and moving around. Either way, she was relieved.

"Foggy's in court," she informed him. "You had a custody case today…do you remember that?"

"I…yeah. I think so."

Sarah narrowed her eyes at his confused answer, trying to figure out just how bad his concussion was. She remembered the advice the doctor had given her for helping her father on days when his memory was especially bad. She wasn't sure if the same thing could be applied to concussive memory loss, but it was worth a try. _Start big, start general,_ the doctor had said. _Memorized facts, things with no personal connection. Then you can get more specific: people he knows, events._

"Okay, um. I think you probably have a concussion," she said hesitantly. "Maybe a pretty bad one. Let's…let's figure out what you remember, okay? Um…what year is it?"

Matt gave her an exasperated look, but she waited expectantly anyway.

"…2015," he said finally.

"Hey, good job," she said cheerfully. "Um…what are the…names of the continents?"

"Are you kidding?" he said, casting his blank eyes up at the ceiling.

"Just trying to figure out how broken your brain is," she said with a shrug. He sighed and listed the continents successfully. Sarah nodded encouragingly, surprised that he was actually going along with this. "Okay, good…do you remember what your court case today was supposed to be about?"

There was a much longer pause at this question, but finally he nodded. "Custody case. Lisa…Lisa Worley. We were trying to help her keep her kids. Her husband's…cruel. Controlling. Using the kids as pawns."

Sarah nodded. She actually had no idea if half of that was true, beyond the fact that it was a custody case to keep a woman's husband from taking her kids. But it sounded like it was probably right. Still, it was clearly more of a struggle for him to remember that than the year or the continents.

"Okay," she said. "Do you…remember anything that happened tonight?"

He leaned his head against the back of the couch and stared unseeingly at the ceiling for a long time.

"Just…parts of it. I tracked down a few guys who were connected to the one I was telling you about. Benny Florence. Found them at an empty warehouse. They were holding a kid there. I think it was a cop's kid, like you said," Matt told her, and Sarah winced. "I took them out, but not before one of them got me pretty…pretty good. I made it a couple of blocks but then I—I wasn't paying close enough attention. The scaffolding I landed on wasn't attached to the building right. I know I called Foggy. And I remember him showing up. And then…I was here. With you."

He seemed to have a pretty good memory of what had happened that night, which she figured that was a good sign. Maybe his brain wasn't totally scrambled, then.

"Foggy called me when he couldn't get you out from under the scaffolding on his own," she explained nervously. "And then he needed help getting you back here and fixing you up, so…that's why I'm here. I, um, I don't think he realized. That you probably…wouldn't want me here."

Matt didn't say anything for a few moments, and she tried to figure out if he was slipping back into unconsciousness.

"How did you guys get me here?"

"Um…" she began reluctantly. She had kind of been hoping that particular subject wouldn't come up. "Well, we put you in a shopping cart."

There was a long pause.

"…a shopping cart," he said blankly.

"Yes. Um…I'm pretty sure we stole it. From a homeless person. It's, uh…it's over in your kitchen right now," she said, gesturing helpfully towards the cart.

"And no one noticed that?"

"Oh. Well, um, we—we covered you up. With a…dirty blanket," she said, wincing.

He frowned in annoyance, but didn't say anything about it, and instead reached up a shaking hand to slowly peel back the bandage on his shoulder. He ran his fingers over the gash running over his shoulder and down his chest.

"We, uh, we figured it would need stitches. But neither of us knows how to do them," Sarah said apologetically.

"I'll show Foggy when he gets back," Matt said, and she nodded. He coughed a few times, wincing in pain each time it caused his body to shift. She realized she probably should have gotten him something to drink when he woke up.

"I'll get you some water," she said quickly, standing up from her position on the armrest.

Sarah went into the kitchen and surveyed the cabinets, trying to guess which one the drinking glasses would be in. She reached up to open the one farthest to the left.

"Next one over," came Matt's hoarse voice from the couch.

She glanced back at him sharply, thrown off guard by his ability to pinpoint exactly where she was, even from the other room. He wasn't even facing her, although she supposed that didn't really matter for him. Slowly she moved her hand to the next cabinet and opened it; sure enough, there were several stacks of glasses inside.

Sarah grabbed one and filled it with water, bringing it back into the room. Matt raised his eyebrows slightly as she handed it to him.

"It doesn't have anything weird printed on it, does it?"

Sarah pursed her lips in embarrassment as she recalled her drunken ramble to him about the glass he'd chosen. She decided against responding, figuring there was nothing she could really say that wouldn't just make it more embarrassing. Instead, she changed the subject.

"Seems like you don't usually get this…injured," she said, gesturing towards his bandaged torso. "What happened? Just too many guys?"

Matt shook his head. "Not really. Seven, I think."

She raised her eyebrows. Seven seemed like kind of a lot to her. "What happened to the little kid?"

"He'll be alright. He was pretty scared, but they didn't hurt him. I think they were waiting to see if his father would cooperate. The police came quick when they heard that it was a cop's kid in there."

Sarah nodded. "So…did you figure anything out? Why that guys name was in Yates' notebook, or…who's hiring his friends?"

Matt shook his head, taking another drink of water and leaning his head back again.

"I didn't really get a chance to ask any questions. Mostly I had to focus on keeping the kid out of the fight."

Sarah observed him silently from her perch on the armrest of the chair. His breathing looked oddly controlled, like he was concentrating on keeping it steady, and he sat at an uncomfortable looking angle, carefully keeping his weight off of his left shoulder as he leaned back.

"Your…your shoulder hurts a lot?" she said uncertainly, and Matt nodded shortly.

"It's dislocated," he said casually.

Sarah blinked in surprised. She had dislocated her shoulder once in high school and it had been incredibly painful; she couldn't imagine how he was just sitting on the couch keeping quiet about it. "What? Seriously? Why didn't you say anything?"

He gave her a blank look as though the answer was obvious. "I can't push it back into place on my own. And relocating it will make the cut open up more. It'll need to be stitched closed right afterwards and…I assume you probably aren't very eager to volunteer. I can wait for Foggy."

Sarah understood what he was actually saying. Helping him with his shoulder would require her to come a lot closer to him than she was generally comfortable with, seeing as how every time he'd been within three feet of her since they'd met he had been threatening her. They were both very aware of that fact. Ninety percent of her brain remembered those encounters and told her to just let him wait for Foggy. But she watched him clutch the blood soaked gauze to his chest as he fumbled in the first aid kit for more, looking incredibly…human. Like a normal, injured person instead of a blind, crime-fighting vigilante. The small, ten percent of her brain that wasn't screaming at her to leave registered something almost close to sympathy. She kicked herself as she realized what she was about to suggest.

"I…I can do it," she said finally, unable to hide the reluctance in her voice. "If you show me how. Foggy won't be back for a few hours. You could bleed out by then."

He stopped messing with the gauze, but didn't say anything for a long time. She couldn't read the expression on his face; maybe it wasn't just the mask that made it difficult to tell what he was thinking, after all. What she could see was the effort it was taking him to ignore what must be incredible amounts of pain in his shoulder. There was no way he could sit there for another few hours like that until Foggy got back.

"You're sure?" he said finally.

"Um…not particularly?" she said honestly. "But I'm offering."

There was another long pause as he considered what she said.

"I'll walk you through it, then."

"Right. Okay," she said nervously, but she didn't move from her position on the chair.

"Step one," he said slowly. "You can't really do it from over there."

Sarah's face flushed and she slowly got off the chair. Cautiously, she took a seat on the couch next to him. Now that she was so close to him, she was suddenly very aware that without her bloodstained sweatshirt she was only wearing a thin tank top. She pushed the thought from her head as Matt indicated his injured arm just above his elbow.

"Put your hand here," he said, and she hesitantly complied. "When I tell you to, pull it towards the back of the couch as hard as you can. Alright?"

"Okay," she said uncertainly, keeping a wary eye on him as he leaned forward, away from the direction she'd be pulling.

He gave her to signal to go, and then slowly rotated his shoulder while she pulled on his arm. The muscles in his arm tensed with the effort, and she could feel them like steel under her hand. She was reminded yet again of the danger lingering right under the surface of the man she was so foolishly sitting inches away from. Finally she heard a hollow popping noise as his shoulder slipped back into place. She made a disgusted face at the sound, and it didn't help when she looked down at the cut on his shoulder and saw that, sure enough, the movement had opened the wound even more, and it was bleeding copiously.

Matt took a few seconds to recover from relocating his shoulder, and then pressed more gauze to the wound, grabbing the first aid bag off the floor with his uninjured arm.

"Okay. Can you sew?" he asked her, and she nodded. "Good. Stitches aren't that different."

Sarah threw him an extremely doubtful look at that statement, but didn't bother arguing. He rummaged around in the bag with one hand and withdrew a pair of latex gloves, which he handed to her to put on, followed by a thread and needle, and then a bottle of isopropyl alcohol. He quickly instructed her on how to sterilize the needle. When she was done, she started to thread the needle, but he shook his head.

"Not yet," he said, handing her a pair of tweezers. "There's still metal in there."

"Metal? Metal from what?"

"Barbed wire."

"I…what?" Sarah asked, confused.

"That's why it looks like it does. I got slashed with something…box cutter, I think. And then I wasn't fast enough to avoid the next guy. He had a—a bat. With barbed wire wrapped around it. Got me right in the same spot," Matt explained.

"Holy shit," Sarah whispered.

"I think there's still a few barbs in there. Can't sew it shut until they're out."

"You…want me to dig around in your _open wound_ for tiny pieces of metal?"

Matt grinned faintly. "I'd appreciate it, yeah."

Sarah silently looked up at the ceiling in disbelief, then back down at Matt. Sighing, she hesitantly lifted the tweezers up to the wound on his torso.

His hand came up to lightly catch her wrist, and she stilled immediately.

"Sterilize it with the alcohol first," he reminded her quietly.

"Right. Right, sorry," she said, and he let her wrist drop. She shook her head and quickly sterilized the tweezers. "Okay. Um…do you know how many…barbs are in there? Or…where?"

"Three. Start at the bottom, there's one close to the surface."

The cut extended down over his shoulder, ending down near his collarbone. Sarah pushed her hair behind her shoulder and gingerly held the tweezers up to the wound. She cringed at the sight of the tweezers going into the wound, and averted her eyes as she took a deep breath.

"This will probably go better if you don't look away the whole time," he said pointedly, gritting his teeth in pain.

"Sorry," she mumbled. She turned her gaze back to the bleeding cut.

"Don't like blood?"

"No, the blood is fine. I can handle blood. It's more the whole…jagged, open wound full of sharp metal that's grossing me out."

Luckily, she found the barb he was talking about fairly quickly. The piece of metal was slippery, and it took her a few tries to pull it out. The pointed metal barb caught on his flesh as she extracted it from the wound, and out of the corner of her eye she could see him tense as he clenched his hands into fists. She gave him an uneasy look as she dropped the small, bloody barb on the large cloth she'd spread out on the coffee table. _One down_ , she thought. She leaned in to dig out the next one, occasionally flicking an apprehensive glance at Matt's reactions.

"You're nervous," he said quietly as she tried to get a hold on the next tiny piece of metal.

Sarah bit her lip and kept her eyes trained on the tweezers. She knew as soon as she sat down that he'd be able to hear her heart pounding nervously, but she had hoped he wouldn't bring it up. "Are you ever not creepily listening to my pulse?"

"Can't help it. Quiet room, and your heart is loud. You're…on edge."

She looked up at him, raising her eyebrows. His gaze was directed somewhere over her shoulder, and he was clearly waiting for her to respond. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to say; they both knew his statement was true, and why.

"You're two inches away from me and you kind of look like you're about to hit someone," she noted softly, nodding towards his clenched fists. "Are you really surprised that I'd be nervous?"

"No," he admitted after a pause. "It's why I didn't ask you to help me. I'm not…" He pressed his lips together before continuing. "You think I'm going to hurt you while you're helping stitch me up?"

"Hard to say. I was trying to help you earlier and you slammed me up against a doorway with no real problem," she reminded him, and she was surprised to see a flash of guilt across his face. The expression looked vaguely familiar, like maybe she had seen it on half of his face before and not been able to place it.

"Sorry…about earlier," he said, and again Sarah blinked at him in surprise. She didn't think she'd ever hear Matt Murdock apologize to her, of all people. He continued quietly, "You…you can stop. If you're that nervous. It's fine."

Sarah sighed, tempted by the offer, but ultimately continued with her task. She managed to extract the second barb reasonably quickly, as well. "If I let you bleed out on your couch, then what was the point of getting out of bed to help drag you back here in the first place?"

Matt nodded silently, tensing again as she finished wiggling the second piece of metal out of the wound. They didn't speak while she worked on the third one, which was the most difficult to come out. She noted briefly that while the muscles in his chest contracted in pain again, he didn't let his hands curl back into fists. She wondered if that was for her benefit.

Finally, three tiny, bloody pieces of metal lay on the coffee table, and Sarah had fully lost her appetite for the next few years. Unfortunately, the process wasn't done yet. She picked up the thread and needle from where she had set it on the cloth, and waited for Matt to tell her where she should begin.

"Start at the top. Go in at a ninety degree angle. Stay close to the edge, but not so close that the stitches will rip out."

Sarah nodded, and she had to grudgingly admit that the process itself did sound fairly similar to sewing. She bit her lip and stuck the needle through his skin near the top of the wound, close to the back of his shoulder.

The stitching part of the process went much smoother than the barb-removing portion had. After a while of her stitching without speaking, Matt seemed to notice as well.

"You're better at this part. I thought the needle would bother you."

Sarah shook her head. "Blood is fine, needles are fine. I'm used to those. I, um, I used to pierce people's noses for ten bucks my freshman year of college. I did most of the girls on my hall." Sarah was rambling; she knew that. It was something she often did when she was nervous. "So I can handle sticking a needle through skin just fine. But I don't have as much experience with, um…digging around in a wound with tweezers."

The two of them were silent for a few moments as she threaded the needle through his skin.

"You used to pierce girls' noses?"

Sarah raised her eyebrows at the fact that he had chosen to focus on that part of her explanation, but talking helped keep her awake, so she answered.

"Yeah. Um, noses, cartilage, whatever. A few eyebrows. I pierced a girl's belly button once, but, um, she yelled so much that it kind of freaked me out, so…I never did any more belly buttons after that."

Sarah was barely listening to herself as she chattered quietly, focused instead on keeping the stitches even and not wincing at the way the thread pulled at his skin around the ragged edges of the wound. She was in the middle of some mild piercing horror story before she even realized how long she had been talking.

"There was one guy who asked me to pierce his septum, but, um…I didn't realize that…he was actually on a lot of acid…at the time, and…"

Sarah's trailed to a stop as Matt slowly leaned his head back against the back of the couch and closed his eyes. She rolled her eyes at herself, realizing that maybe the mindless chatter was helping calm her down, but it was probably annoying to him. She continued inserting the needle in silence for a minute before he spoke.

"And what?"

Sarah looked up at him in surprise.

"Oh. I didn't…think you were listening. I was just…talking. About nothing."

"I noticed," he said dryly. "But keep going. If you want. It, uh…it helps distract from the needle going through my skin. Plus, your…your hands shake less. When you're busy talking. So…if you want to keep going. I don't mind."

Sarah paused, and then continued her story. She talked quietly for a while about various things: light, unimportant topics that didn't require any focus. It helped keep her awake, and Matt relaxed slightly as she went along. Eventually she had only a little bit of the wound left to go.

She pushed her long hair over her shoulder again, wishing she had thought to put it up in a pony tail before she left her apartment. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Matt slowly cock his head to the side like he was focusing on something.

"You're bleeding," he said.

Sarah glanced up at him, then craned her neck around to get a look at the back of her shoulder. Sure enough, there were several deep scratches from where Matt's short fingernails had accidentally dug into her skin, with a few thin streaks of died blood underneath. She turned back to face him.

"That would be your handiwork," she informed him lightly as she resumed stitching.

He nodded silently, and she thought she saw that brief flash of guilt again, but she couldn't be sure.

She shrugged. "It's barely bleeding. I mean, on a scale of one to, you know… _you,_ it's like a two. I'm surprised you could even tell." She paused and then squinted at him. "How _can_ you tell?"

"I can smell the blood. Can taste it, too, actually. In the air. Tastes different than my own."

Sarah wrinkled her nose in disgust and shook her head. "I knew that the answer would be bizarre and creepy, but I asked anyway," she muttered.

Matt exhaled shortly in what might have been a laugh, but ended up as a pained grimace.

Finally, Sarah was done with the stitches, and Matt instructed her on how to tie them off properly. It took her several tries to get it right, but eventually she was successful.

"Okay. All done. I know it took a while, and they're not as neat as some of these other ones you have, but I—I think they'll hold. Probably. Maybe your nurse friend can redo them, or—what?" she said nervously as his face darkened.

"My what?" he asked carefully.

Sarah cringed as she realized her mistake. She cautiously moved to stand up and put some space between the two of them. "Um. I didn't mean—I don't really—"

Matt's hand on her arm made her pause. It was just a light grip, probably meant to grab her attention more than actually keep her there, but she froze all the same.

"Calm down," he said. "I said I wasn't going to hurt you, and I meant it. Just…what do you know about…her?"

"N-not much. Foggy just mentioned her briefly."

"What did he say?"

"Just…just that she's a nurse. And she usually helps you with this kind of stuff," Sarah said, and Matt raised his eyebrows at her, clearly catching on that this wasn't the extent of what she knew. She continued reluctantly. "And that she's out of town…and she's the other number in your burner phone." Sarah paused, then figured she might as well get everything out in the open. "Also that her name is Claire," she finished finally.

Matt stared at her in slight disbelief. "So…everything he knows about her, basically."

"I don't think he meant to tell me that much," Sarah said quickly. "It just came up, because…well, it didn't make a lot of sense for him to call me if there was someone who, you know. Actually knows what she's doing."

Matt shrugged. "She never asked me to name all the continents, at least."

"That's a thing," she said defensively. "For concussions. I think. But my point was, it only came up because I asked. He said Claire couldn't come, and there was no one else, so…here I am."

He nodded, but didn't say anything. Sarah glanced at the time on her phone, wincing when she saw that she also had a missed call and a voicemail from work.

"Foggy should be back in the next hour or so, though, so he can…can…what on earth are you doing?" she said incredulously as she realized Matt was slowly starting to stand up from the couch.

"It's fine," he insisted, and indeed he stayed surprisingly steady once he got to his feet, though he still looked disturbingly pale. "I'm only getting up for a minute. I just want to change clothes."

She looked up at the ceiling again in exasperation, but didn't say anything. If he passed out in his bedroom while trying to change clothes, that was on him. He stumbled into his room and closed the door behind him, reemerging a few minutes later in sweatpants, a zipped up sweatshirt, and a pair of thick socks. She blinked at the sight of him dressed like a normal person, minus the injuries on his face. He slowly made his way back over to the couch, where he dropped back down into his seat heavily.

"So…why _are_ you here?" he asked, apparently continuing the conversation where they had left off.

Sarah stared at him. "We…we _just_ established that. Like, maybe three minutes ago. Please tell me your concussion isn't that bad."

"I—no, that's not what I meant," he said with a weak grin. "I know what brought you here, I just meant…why did you come? You could have said no. To Foggy. If I bled out under a scaffolding somewhere, I'd of been one less thing for you to worry about. I know the thought must have crossed your mind."

She looked down at couch, fiddling with the thread and needle on her lap. Yet another topic of conversation she had been hoping to avoid, if only because she didn't fully know the answer herself.

"Briefly," she admitted, knowing that he'd probably be able to tell if she lied. "But then what? Just keep working at Orion for the rest of my life? That's right back where I started before I met you. You're kind of my way out of there."

"So…just a business decision, then?" He didn't sound very convinced.

She didn't know how to explain why she had decided to come; it didn't even really make sense to her. Finally she just settled on telling him what had first come to mind when she had been debating her decision to come earlier that night.

"I don't know. You…helped me with my traffic ticket," she said

He raised his eyebrows skeptically. "That's not really on the same level."

"Well, no, but that's not really…what I mean. It's not just the ticket," she explained, fumbling her words as she tried to figure out how to word what she wanted to say. "I guess, more specifically…when you found out about my dad and—and his…problems, you had every opportunity to use it against me. And no real reason not to. I think—I think we both knew that. But instead, you helped me. I'm still not one hundred percent sure why, but you did. So…" She shrugged uncomfortably. "So here I am."

Matt paused, then opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but was interrupted by the ringing of his burner phone on the coffee table. He leaned forward slowly to grab it and flipped it open.

"Hi, Foggy," he answered. The response on the other end must have been enthusiastic, because he grinned slightly. "Yeah, Foggy, I'm alive."

While Matt talked to Foggy, Sarah glanced down at her own phone again, and the voicemail icon mocking her from the notifications screen. Clearly her absence had, in fact, raised some eyebrows. Most likely Ronan's creepy, poorly groomed eyebrows, to be exact. She contemplated listening to the message now, but was distracted when she heard Matt say her name.

"Yeah, I, uh, I showed Sarah how to do it," he was saying into the phone. Sarah assumed he was talking about the stitches, and she waited while Foggy presumably responded on the other end. "No, I don't think she did," Matt said, tilting his head in her direction. There was a pause while he listened to what Foggy was saying. She narrowed her eyes at him, wanting to know what they were saying about her.

"Are you serious? No, I'm not—I don't—fine." Matt sighed in frustration, then grudgingly held the phone out to Sarah. "He wants to talk to you."

Sarah took the phone from him hesitantly. "Hello?"

"Hey! Matt sounds…alive. I heard you stitched him up. Good job."

"Yeah, it…it went alright," she said. "Did you win your case?"

"Sure did! You can tell old bloody Murdock that Nelson is doing just great on his own. All of the legal prowess with none of the gore."

Sarah glanced over at Matt, who looked irritated by the entire situation. "I think he can hear you alright on his own, actually."

"Probably. Ears like a bat. How did it go when he woke up?"

"Um…" Sarah began uncertainly, glancing back at Matt. He had that unreadable expression on his face again, but she knew he was listening. "Kind of like I expected. But it got better."

"Well that's good. And he let you fix him up alright?"

"Mostly," she said, then added in a whisper, "He got very annoyed when I made him recite all of the continents."

"We _just_ established that I can hear him, why would I not be able to hear you?" Matt said from the couch. Sarah just shrugged apologetically.

"Well, if you think he'll be alright on his own for a bit, I'll be there in maybe half an hour," Foggy said. "You can go ahead and go to work, if you want."

"Yeah," Sarah said, thinking of the ominous voicemail on her cell phone. "Yeah, that's probably a good idea."

As they ended their conversation and hung up, something occurred to her.

"How do you know which number is calling you?" she asked Matt curiously as she handed him the phone back. None of the numbers were saved under any sort of title to differentiate them.

"Different ringtones," he said, slipping the phone into his sweatshirt pocket.

"Right. I guess it wouldn't be a very good idea to have our names in there."

He suddenly looked suspicious. "What do you have me saved as in your phone?" he asked slowly.

Sarah's mind flashed to the tiny devil emoticon currently saved as his contact.

"Nothing conspicuous," she answered innocently.

"Sarah."

"I have you saved as 'Daredevil, AKA Matthew Murdock,'" she said seriously.

Matt exhaled in annoyance. "You don't get to talk to Foggy anymore. He's rubbing off on you."

"He seemed nice," she said hesitantly, not sure what her standing was as far as discussing Foggy went. Historically, the subject had been a shaky one for them; she didn't want to push it.

"He is. He's the best person I know," Matt said, surprising her with the blunt honesty of his statement.

"Yeah, I…I gathered as much. Um…well, he's going to be here soon. And I'm late for work," Sarah said, frowning at the thought of the long and certainly unpleasant work day waiting for her. "So I'm going to head out. You'll…be okay here, right?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine," he said tiredly. He slowly started getting to his feet again. "Hang on a second."

Matt slowly made his way into his bedroom again, then came back out a few moments later with a dark blue sweatshirt in his hand. He came to a stop in front of her and held the sweatshirt out. She gave him a questioning look.

"It's almost ten in the morning," he explained. "People might notice you walking around in a tank top stained with blood."

Sarah's glanced down at her clothing. Her shirt had only gotten more bloodstained as she was stitching him up, and her shorts hadn't faired much better. Muttering a quick thanks, she took the sweatshirt from him and zipped it up over her clothes. It was too large on her, and she had to roll the sleeves up a few times in order to use her hands, though luckily the large size meant it covered most of her shorts as well. She frowned down at her appearance.

"It looks like I'm not wearing anything underneath. People are going to think I'm a flasher."

Matt shrugged. "Better than a murderer."

She reached down to pick her backpack up off the floor and started to throw it over her shoulder.

"Sarah," she heard Matt say, and was surprised to feel a hand touch her upper arm lightly to halt her. She looked up at him to see an oddly hesitant look on his face. He let go of her arm and shoved both of his hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt. "I just…wanted to say thank you. I know I haven't…done much to deserve any help from you. But you came anyway. I'm…I'm glad Foggy called you," he said seriously.

Sarah stared at him, stunned. If there was one thing she was even more shocked to hear from the vigilante than an apology, it was a thank you. _Maybe it's the concussion talking._

"Um…you're welcome," she said finally, realizing she hadn't responded. "I, uh…I guess it's safe to assume that you probably won't be dropping by tonight?"

Matt shook his head tiredly. "Foggy'll never let me go out tonight. He does this thing where he makes up reasons to linger around the apartment to make sure I don't go anywhere. I think he thinks I don't know what he's doing."

Sarah noticed that Matt talked about Foggy with the same affectionately annoyed tone that Foggy had used when talking about him a few hours previously. She suddenly found herself wishing she could stick around and see how the two of them interacted in person, just to satisfy her curiosity about the more human side of Matt. But she knew she couldn't afford to be any later to work than she was already going to be.

"Okay. Good. Um…I'll see you when you're…feeling better," she said awkwardly, shouldering her bag.

Matt nodded as he slowly lowered himself back down onto the couch, looking exhausted. Sarah took a last, contemplative glance at him, and then left the apartment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Okay, so this chapter was a little unusual in that it was just one long scene with no particular action. But don't worry, we'll get back to Orion/Ronan/Sarah's dad/mysterious dead coworkers soon enough!


	10. Calm Before

Matt breathed deeply and tried to keep as still as possible on the couch while he waited for Foggy to arrive. He knew he should be trying to meditate, but he was having difficulty keeping his mind off of the events of the night.

He could only remember bits and pieces from his first bout of consciousness. He remembered coming to very suddenly on his couch and not knowing how he got there. Sounds were incredibly loud, coming from all directions in a confusing jumble. He remembered not being able to tell the difference between his own frantic heartbeat and Sarah's as he trapped her small frame against the doorway. Beyond that it was mostly snatches of confused senses. His head pounding with confusion and pain. Sarah's anxious voice going in and out as he tried to stay steady. The metallic smell of blood getting stronger. And then a gentle, hesitant hand on his waist and one on his arm, slowly guiding him back to the couch. A calm voice speaking quietly and indistinctly, keeping him anchored to his surroundings. Then the rough feel of the couch cushions on his back, and deep blackness after that.

Matt's second return to consciousness had been more gradual, less jarring. Sarah was jumpy, nervous in the way she usually only was if he was directly threatening her. He couldn't remember what he'd done to hurt her, but obviously he had. She was bleeding somewhere on her back, and she'd moved away from him as soon as he'd woken up again. But for some inexplicable reason she was still there anyway, having chosen to stick around—albeit at a safe distance—instead of make a clean exit while he was passed out. Even more inexplicable had been her reluctant offer to stitch him up.

He idly ran his fingers over the stitches that tracked over his shoulder and down his chest. The process had gone about as well as could be expected, given their history. Sarah's proximity to Matt had made her jittery and tense, and he'd tried to focus his energy on—for once—being as unintimidating as he could. He hadn't even realized that he'd been clenching his fists from the pain until she had hesitantly pointed it out, giving away just how hyperaware of his actions she was. When he had reached out to lightly catch her arm, he had been careful to stay far away from the area he had bruised so badly not too long ago. Even so, she had flinched at his touch like he was about to strike her, and somehow he had found it more difficult than usual to tamp down the guilt.

Matt had grown used to Claire's healing ministrations: gentle and steady, always calm despite the situation. Sarah's first aid attempts couldn't be more different. Where Claire was composed and firm, Sarah was nervous and uncertain. Her hands had been shaking slightly, and her long hair brushed against his chest as she worked, no matter how many times she pushed it back over her shoulder. Each time she did, he was hit with a strange combination of her usual citrusy scent mixed with the scent of his own soap and water and blood. The clash of the two worlds had been disconcerting, to say the least.

In fact, it was still disconcerting, and he wondered if part of the reason he was having trouble meditating was due to her scent lingering in several areas of his apartment. She had obviously snooped around a bit while he was unconscious, so who knew what else about his personal life she had discovered, on top of everything that Foggy had told her. The whole night left him feeling like they had crossed a line of some sort, and he wasn't sure if they were going to be able to go back.

Matt took a deep breath, trying to focus on healing and not on the pain shooting through his body, and especially not on the confusion and guilt filling his head.

It had been easier, when they first met. The choice had been simple: intimidate a stranger who had questionable employment, and in return ensure the protection of his loved ones. When Matt had tracked Sarah down that first night, he had fully intended to be the one and only time they ever spoke. Frighten her to the point where she would keep quiet, and then watch her occasionally to make sure she was staying that way. That was the plan. Continuing to interact with her beyond that first night had never been a part of that plan.

But he had, and now she wasn't a stranger any longer. Not a friend, either, but something confusing and in between. As rocky as their partnership was, spending so much time together made it unavoidable that he had learned things about Sarah, things that made her less of as stranger and more of a human. And treating a human the way he had been was a lot harder than treating a stranger that way.

He wasn't sure how long he sat on the couch, chasing guilty thoughts and justifications around in circles in his head while trying to keep perfectly still to avoid more pain. After a while, he heard Foggy's familiar footsteps approaching the front door, and then the key in the lock. Matt had given Foggy a key not long after they had reconciled, just in case…well, in case something exactly like last night happened.

Foggy's footsteps were especially quiet as he came in the living room, clearly trying not to wake Matt if he was sleeping. He opened his eyes and lifted his head up to let the other man know he was awake.

"Hey, Foggy."

"You know you have a much more comfortable bed you could be using instead of the couch, right? It has silk sheets and everything."

"Yeah, but I'm already here," Matt said with a weak grin. He started to shrug, but stopped immediately when the movement sent a searing pain through his shoulder. "Ah—not moving wins out over being in a bed."

"How are you feeling?"

"Been worse."

"Been better, too," Foggy pointed out.

"How was court?" Matt asked, changing the subject.

"It was good," Foggy answered reluctantly, obviously not fooled by Matt's avoidance of the topic. "Lisa Worley said to send you her thanks. She also said we should expect a basket of some sort of baked goods at the office tomorrow, which is _excellent._ And it will help us deal with the fact that she will be paying us in very, very small increments, over who knows how long a period of time, with no apparent payment schedule."

"Hey, our first client never paid us at all," Matt pointed out. "This is a step up."

"That's true. Karen never _did_ pay us. What a bum."

Matt chuckled at Foggy's indignant tone. He reached for the glass of water next to him, having to focus more than usual to pinpoint where it was. As he drank the water, he could sense Foggy was on the edge of saying something, but was hesitating.

"So…" Foggy began cautiously as Matt set the glass back down. Matt closed his eyes and slowly leaned his head back against the couch, already fairly certain what topic his friend was about to bring up. "Not that I'm looking for another fight with you while you're bleeding out on your couch, but…I think maybe we need to have a talk about your people skills, buddy."

"Do we?" Matt asked tiredly.

"We do," Foggy confirmed. "I know that I haven't really asked much about your trips to go see Sarah, because…I don't know. I guess talking about the more disturbing aspects of your night life didn't really seem like a point we had gotten to, yet. But, Matt…some of things she said about you tonight…"

"Not great things, I'd guess," Matt said quietly when Foggy didn't supply any more information.

"Well, she's not in the Matt Murdock fan club, to say the least. Which, to be fair, is a small club. I'm both the president and the treasurer, and it's pretty exhausting to hold down both positions," he said, and Matt gave a small, tired smile before Foggy grew somber again. "But seriously. You scare the hell out of her, dude. More than I realized."

Matt sighed. "This…this shouldn't be news to you, Foggy. I haven't tried to hide...what my relationship with her has been."

"Alright, maybe you haven't tried to _hide_ it," Foggy conceded. "But let's be honest, you've been kind of vague. Sarah, on the other hand, didn't have any problem letting me know exactly what dealing with you has been like. In fact, I think maybe it took her a little while to realize that I didn't already know. And a lot of it sounded…" Foggy trailed off with a an uncomfortable shrug.

"Scaring her was kind of the point," Matt argued. "From the start."

"I know. I remember. But I just…" Foggy sighed and waved his hands around in frustration. "Are you sure that everything you've been doing is really necessary?"

" _Yes,_ " Matt said adamantly. "It is. Or…it was. I mean, I thought it was. I don't—I don't know."

"Wow. That's one really strong argument you have there, Murdock. You should try using that in court sometime."

Matt rolled his eyes but didn't have a retort.

"I'm just worried," Foggy continued. "About you more than her, actually. It just seems like maybe…maybe you can't separate yourself from Daredevil anymore. The Matt that I met in law school knew how to deal with problems using something other than violence. Or, the—the threat of violence, or whatever."

"Well I have very different problems now than I had back then. There are no—no _guidelines_ for this, Foggy. There's no crime fighting handbook that lets me know if I'm in the right or not," Matt said bitterly. "Do you understand what would happen if she told someone? Have you actually thought about it? Really thought it through?"

Foggy didn't answer immediately, so Matt continued, trying to control the panic and frustration building up in his chest.

"Because _I have_." Matt's head was pounding, and he leaned forward and pressed the palms of his hands to his eyes in an effort to stem the pain. "I've run through it in my mind a million times since she found out. If—if she went to the cops? I'd be arrested, charged with…who knows how many crimes. And then disbarred. And sent to prison for probably the rest of my life. Which, considering I'd be in there with criminals that I helped put away, wouldn't be very long. But there's no way that'd be the end of it. No, they'd—they'd charge you, too. Because you were right, Foggy. No one would believe that you didn't know what was going on this whole time."

"I could handle myself if that happened, Matt, I _am_ a defense lawyer—" Foggy started, but Matt cut him off.

"Yeah, and what about everyone else?" he snapped, surprised by the force in his own voice. "What about when they track it back to Claire and arrest her? And she goes to prison just for—for being a _good person_ and saving someone's life when she didn't have to? As if I haven't messed up her life enough. Brought her enough pain that she doesn't deserve. And—and _Karen_. They'd go after her just as hard as they'd go after you. And she doesn't even know anything. She's innocent. But who would believe that?"

"But, Matt, you can't—"

" _No,_ " Matt cut him off again. He desperately needed Foggy to understand how serious this was, that he was doing this to protect them. "I'm not done. Because her going to the cops? That's the _best_ scenario. That's the least painful of all the possibilities. But—but if she skipped the police and went straight to Orion? Do you know what kind of people that company has at its disposal? Violent, vicious people with no conscience, Foggy. Hit men, and rapists, and human traffickers. Dangerous people who could easily find you and Karen before I…before I'd even know what had happened. Do—do you know what they would do to you? To Karen and to Claire—" Matt was dismayed to hear his own voice crack. "Do you really think that men like that would just let them die easy if they got their hands on them?"

Matt could hear Foggy's heartbeat stumble at the implication behind his words as the other man looked down at the floor.

"No. They probably wouldn't," Foggy whispered.

"For _weeks_ , those scenarios have been all that has been on my mind. Do you think that I've just been going home at night a-and thinking up ways to terrorize someone who can't defend herself?" Matt asked desperately. "I haven't. I've been up for nights trying to get these images out of my head. Images of what could happen to you guys. Because of _me_. Because of this path that I've chosen. And now, with Sarah…that possibility is _so_ much closer. It's just a slip of the tongue away. All of this danger that you're all in, that—that _I've_ put you in…it was awful enough to think about that when it felt like I had some control over who found out. And now I don't. She does."

"Well…I mean, couldn't you say the same about Claire?"

"No. That was different," Matt said adamantly, shaking his head. "Claire knew my face, not my name. Not until I told her. And she definitely didn't know where I work, or _your_ name, like Sarah. And besides, Claire works for a hospital, not the worst corporation in Hell's Kitchen."

"Karen worked as a secretary for one of Fisk's companies, too," Foggy pointed out.

"Karen has no idea who Daredevil is."

"So, if she had found out, would you have treated her like you do Sarah?"

"Well, I…no, probably not," Matt admitted grudgingly. "But she was a secretary at a construction company. She didn't know about the illegal things they were doing until the end. It was all financial. Orion is—is literally just a façade for violent criminals. I don't even understand what their cover business _is_. There's no one who works there that doesn't know what they do. Including Sarah."

Foggy was silent for a while, observing him. Matt wished he would just say whatever was on his mind; the wait was killing him as he tried to figure out what his friend was thinking.

"You know, Matt, I've heard you give a lot of well-rehearsed closing arguments. And this kind of sounds rehearsed. Like maybe…I don't know, you've had to convince yourself of this a few times, too? Does that not set off some alarms in your head?"

Matt didn't say anything. Foggy was right. The justification sounded rehearsed because he had told it to himself so many times.

"You know she helped save your life tonight, right?" Foggy said. "There was no way I was going to be able to get you out of there and back here without help."

"I know."

"So…what are you planning on doing about that? Just keep on giving her the full Daredevil treatment anyway?"

"No, I…obviously not."

"Good. That's a step. So…what, then?"

"I don't—I don't _know,_ " Matt said, hating the disappointment still coloring Foggy's tone. "I've been trying. Since I found about her father, I've been trying to…be better. At least a little. The last few times we've seen each other, I've—I've stayed on the other side of the room from her. I haven't laid a hand on her."

The words sounded like weak excuses even to him, and sure enough, Foggy felt the same way.

"So, basically, you've done the bare minimum required to not be considered an unstable maniac?"

Matt ran a hand over his face. "Pretty much."

Foggy paused, clearly unimpressed.

"Well, that's wonderful, Matt. Really, great job. A-plus for effort."

He cringed at Foggy's caustic tone.

"I didn't mean—I just…I just mean that I'm not— _enjoying_ doing this to her. I do feel guilty, I'm not that…not that far gone," he said softly. "I've been trying to go easier on her. The last few times I've seen her."

"Including tonight?"

Matt was silent. They both knew that it didn't include tonight.

"I'm going to go ahead and assume that's a no," Foggy continued, while Matt fidgeted with the loose threads on the arm of the couch. "Because when I asked her how it went, she said it went like she expected, and let me tell you: she was fully expecting you to wake up and go for her throat. Just for being in your apartment. _Helping you._ It's not fun to hear someone talk about your best friend like that, Matt."

"I'm sorry," Matt whispered automatically.

"Hey, don't apologize to me. I'm not the one whose arm you threatened to break."

Matt winced. "She told you about that?"

"Yeah, Matt," Foggy said, and the disappointment in his voice was unbearable. "It came up. She did say that was the worst it ever got. Couldn't tell if she was telling the truth or if she was just trying to make me feel better."

"Both, probably. That night was…bad. As bad as the night we first met. I felt awful, later. When I realized how badly I'd bruised her arm, and then even—even more so when I found out about her dad. I felt sick. If that…helps, at all," he finished lamely.

"It helps a little, yeah. Catholic guilt makes up a good fifty percent of Matt Murdock's personality, so it helps to know that at least part of you is still familiar."

The two of them were quiet for a few minutes as they both contemplated the others' points. It was Matt who finally broke the silence.

"I don't…I don't know what happened tonight," Matt admitted quietly. "I woke up and everything was painful and…confusing. I didn't know what was going on. Just that you weren't there and she was, and…I don't remember what happened, exactly. I know that later on her—her shoulder was bleeding. And she said it was from me. I guess I hurt her. But I wasn't…I wouldn't have. If I had been more with it."

Foggy didn't say anything, and an awful thought occurred to Matt.

"You…you believe me, right?" he asked Foggy uncertainly.

"Of course I believe you," Foggy said impatiently, and Matt felt a rush of relief when he was able to tell that his friend was telling the truth. "I get why you've been doing what you have. I really do. If you trust her and it turns out you shouldn't, then we're all screwed. Big time. But if you keep this up…it's going to take its toll on you, man. You know that."

Matt's head was killing him—actually, his whole body was killing him—and he wanted nothing more than to not have this conversation. "Can't we just—can we drop this?"

"No! Because I know you, Matt!" Foggy said with clear exasperation. "You get all inside your head with the guilt and the—the conflicting whatevers and you need to argue it out with someone. And I don't know if you've noticed, but there aren't a lot of people lining up to debate morality with you. Pretty much just me, actually."

"So this is just…what? You playing Devil's Advocate?"

"No," Foggy scoffed. "We can't both be devils. That would be ridiculous. And very confusing. I'm just trying to appeal to your inner law student. And maybe your inner…decent person."

Matt leaned his head back again and closed his eyes. "Okay. _Okay._ I'll think about it. I really will. Can I just…go to sleep now?"

"Yeah. That's probably a good idea. If Claire was here, she'd probably be yelling at me for keeping you awake this long, actually."

Matt shifted until he was lying on his back, still too tired to get off the couch and find his way to his own bed.

"Just one last thing," he heard Foggy say.

Matt raised his eyebrows, not bothering to turn his head back towards his friend. "What?"

"You can tell she's hot, right? I mean…you know. You always know."

"Foggy," Matt complained.

"Alright, alright. I'll take that as a yes," Foggy said. "But she seems nice. And she's smart. And kinda ballsy, for someone who constantly looks like a deer in the headlights. I mean, if you had to get yourself mixed up working with an employee at a dangerous company who could destroy your life at any moment…she's probably one of the better ones you could have gotten."

"I'm glad you two managed to bond so well over sneaking me around in a shopping cart," Matt grumbled resentfully.

Foggy just flashed him a grin that Matt would have known was there even if he couldn't sense it. "And they say it's hard to make friends in New York."

~*~*~*~*~*~

Sarah rubbed her eyes tiredly as she entered her apartment building. It had been about eight hours since Foggy's phone call had woken her up. Even before that she had only gotten about two hours of sleep, kept awake by thoughts of the trouble she had gotten herself into at work. And now—if the voicemail still waiting on her phone was any indication—she'd made things even worse.

She wasn't paying attention as she exited the elevator, so she almost ran directly into Mrs. Benedict, who was waiting to get on.

"Sarah! You aren't usually here this late in the morning. What are you—oh," Mrs. Benedict said, looking down at Sarah's attire and nodding knowingly. "Are you coming back from a young man's place, by any chance?"

"What?" Sarah asked blankly, before glancing down at the sweatshirt she was wearing. "Oh! Oh _no_. No, no, no, that's _not_ what this is—"

There was no use. The older woman was already delighted, and Sarah's protests fell on deaf ears.

"Oh, don't be embarrassed, honey! I know that young people think no one my age ever had any adventures, but you know, I could tell you stories that would make a hooker blush."

"Please don't," Sarah mumbled, and Mrs. Benedict appeared not to hear her.

"I was starting to get worried that you would spend all of your nights holed up in your apartment all alone. But look at you, your luck is turning!"

She thought back to the events of the previous night. "Uh…yep. Lucky me."

"And it was very chivalrous of whoever you spent the night with to lend you his sweatshirt, so you don't have to walk home in your…jeggings or your hot pants or whatever girls wear out on dates these days. Crop tops, I don't know."

Sarah thoughts flashed to the dirty, bloodstained pajamas she was wearing under the sweatshirt.

"Yes," she agreed, nodding firmly. "Jeggings and a crop top. That is…what I have on. Under here."

"You know, one time I spent the night with a sailor, and the next morning I was sill pretty tipsy, so I thought it would be funny to walk home in his full Navy uniform. I left my dress and high heels there for him to wear back to base."

"Wow," Sarah said, slowly backing away towards her apartment. She could sense that there was probably a good twenty minutes packed into that story somewhere, and she really needed to go get ready for work. "That sounds like a great story, Mrs. Benedict, but I really need to go—"

"Well, wait a minute now! Who is he?"

"The…sailor?"

"No, whoever's place you're coming from! Do I know him?" Mrs. Benedict asked. Her eyes dropped down read the front of the sweatshirt Sarah was wearing, and Sarah's stomach flipped as she remembered that it had the name of Matt's alma mater on it. It didn't specify that it was the law school, at least. "Oh, Columbia! Now, that's a good school. I like a smart man; they always have things to talk about even after the gears stop shifting, if you catch my drift."

Sarah wrinkled her nose. "Um…I think I do?"

"What's he do? Columbia—I bet he's a doctor, isn't he?" Mrs. Benedict asked, sounding excited in the way that only old women talking about eligible doctors could sound.

"Dentist," Sarah said quickly, choosing the first non-lawyer profession that popped into her mind. Mrs. Benedict looked slightly disappointed.

"Oh. Well, that's a very good career too! I'm sorry to pry, I just worry about you. I haven't seen you dating anyone in so long. I'm very happy for you, dear," she said kindly, and Sarah smiled affectionately back at her. Even though the older woman was completely mistaken, her sentiment was sweet.

"Thanks, Mrs. B."

The nice moment was short lived.

"Now, tell me, are you using condoms?" Mrs. Benedict asked seriously.

"Oh, my God," Sarah cringed. "I really have to leave now."

"They make them in all sorts of colors now, you know. Like yellow; why would anyone want yellow? Reminds me of jaundice."

"I'm so not talking about this," Sarah mumbled.

"And flavors, too. I always see them next to the register when I go get my blood pressure medication. Did you know they make glow-in-the-dark condoms? I think that's just delightful. Very practical. I can't count how many times that would have come in handy when I was younger—"

"I am so late for work," Sarah said pleadingly, pointedly ignoring the topic at hand.

"Okay, okay. My point is, I don't know what kind of contraceptive young people are using these days," Mrs. Benedict rambled on as though she hadn't even heard her. "But use something, dear. Birth control pills, or condoms, or hashtags—"

"I—what? That's not what that word means—" Sarah began, and then stopped herself. That was the beginning of a conversation that would go on for hours, and she needed to be at Orion as soon as possible. She took a deep breath and exhaled. "I'm—I'm good. Not gonna get pregnant, I promise."

"Well, if you do, don't worry. Dentists make good money," Mrs. Benedict said helpfully.

"Um…good to know," Sarah said awkwardly. "I—I really need to get to work, Mrs. B."

"Alright, okay. Have a good day," Mrs. Benedict said, and Sarah hurried towards her door before she could say anything else.

Once the door to her apartment was closed behind her, she leaned against it and exhaled in exasperation. Why did everyone seem to think she was getting laid a lot more than she was?

Sarah put her cell on speaker phone so that she could finally listen to the voicemail while getting ready. She immediately regretted the choice when the sound of Ronan's voice coming from the speaker made it sound like he was actually in her apartment.

_"Sarah. Are we under the impression that coming to work is optional now? Your work hours aren't a suggestion, sweetheart. I'm sure that answering the phones and filing is very tiring for you, but you don't just get to take days off whenever you want. If you're busy catching up on work, you're not doing new work. So, not only will you not be getting paid for the hours you're missing, but for every hour you're gone today, you won't get paid for an hour tomorrow. I'm sure we'll see you soon."_

She gritted her teeth as the message ended. Nothing got under her skin like Ronan's condescending tone, and the obvious glee he got from being in control of her paycheck. She didn't have much time to dwell on it as she jumped in the shower for a quick five minutes; just long enough to wash any leftover dirt and blood off her skin. If her hair was still dirty, then so be it.

Sarah managed to make it to Orion less than forty-five minutes after arriving at her apartment. It was almost lunchtime, although she obviously wouldn't be able to take a lunch today. When she set her purse down on the desk, she could already see Ronan watching her from his desk. He indicated the chair in front of the desk, and she reluctantly made her way into his office.

"So…I realize being a secretary is hard," Ronan began, and Sarah was already bristling at his patronizing tone. "You have to sit on your ass at a desk and greet people. Sometimes you have to send out memos. It's difficult, I'm sure. But I would think you could at least manage something as simple as coming to work on time."

"I had too much to drink last night," she said immediately, having already rehearsed this conversation in her head on the subway ride to work. "I…slept through my alarm. Sorry."

"Out drinking? Again? Was it, uh…with someone from work? Have you moved on so quickly?"

She looked down at her hands, nervously chipping a piece of nail polish off of her index finger. "Nope. It was just me."

She knew Ronan was smirking even though she wasn't looking at him.

"Interesting. Do you spend a lot of time drinking alone? It's not good for you. Rots your brain cells. You'll end up as bad as your father, soon."

She looked up at him sharply, and he grinned at her reaction.

"How _is_ old Mitch doing, anyway?" Ronan asked.

"He's great," she said coldly. "Thanks so much for asking."

"Yeah? Still got a few marbles left in his head?"

She didn't respond, just tried to keep her face void of any expression.

"He must be going pretty quickly at this point, I would guess," Ronan continued. "Makes sense. I mean, if all the memories I had were of my useless daughter and my life as a gambling loser, I wouldn't want them to stick around either. Not much worth reliving there."

Sarah gripped the arm of the chair tighter. Ronan often made comments like these, but they got to her every time, and she hated herself for letting it affect her.

"Is there a point you're getting to?"

"I'm just wondering how you feel about the fact that you're doing all this for someone who, soon enough, is probably going to be a drooling vegetable in some shitty hospital somewhere. I mean, it's pretty clear that he's going to kick the bucket before you ever finish paying that debt off, right? We all get that?"

Her heart pounded as she tried to figure out if he was talking about the Alzheimer's progressing, or if he was threatening her father. Ronan usually wasn't subtle enough for the latter, but it was hard to tell. And there was still the lingering possibility that the men who had come to Mitch's door were threats in disguise.

Sarah leaned forward before she could change her mind. "Maybe by then he'll have made his peace with God," she said meaningfully.

Ronan gave her a bored look. "How nice for him."

"He's started reading the Bible lately," she said carefully. She watched him closely, but it didn't look like any of what she was saying was registering with him. She wasn't sure if she was disappointed or relieved. "He's really been enjoying talking about it. Whenever anyone stops by."

"Are you still drunk?" Ronan asked in disgust. He clearly didn't understand what she was going on about.

Sarah frowned, leaning back.

"You probably are. You do realize that you can be fired, right?" Ronan asked, leaning forward and resting his arms on the desk. "Wesley was basically doing your family a favor when he offered you this job. If you get fired, who knows how Mitch is going to pay off that debt?"

There was a long pause during which Sarah could only hear the own thudding of her heart and her uneven breathing. She wondered briefly if she had always been so aware of those things, or if it was only since she started spending so much time with someone who was always listening to them.

"So…" Ronan drawled. "Are you going to decide to actually do your job and come to work when you're supposed to?"

Sarah looked away, biting the inside of her cheek hard.

"Yeah."

"Well, that's great. There's already some work waiting for you on your desk."

She pushed the chair back forcefully and tried to exit the room as fast as she could.

"You know," Ronan's voice piped up from behind her, and she stopped and turned back towards him reluctantly. "I always like a girl with a few daddy issues. It always screws 'em up. Makes them very…vulnerable," Ronan said, flashing her a sick smirk.

She stared at him hard for a few moments, trying to ignore the way Ronan's leer made her hair stand on end. Quickly she turned and went back to her own desk. She tried starting on the paperwork that was waiting for her, but it was a long time before her hand stopped shaking enough for her to write properly.

Overall, she'd been expecting worse. He had easily accepted the excuse that she had drank to much the night before, which was what really mattered. The fact that he didn't seem to know about the Jehovah's Witnesses should have been a relief to her, but somehow it just made her more confused. She wondered idly if Matt might know more about it, since according to Foggy he was—oddly enough—a religious person.

Like Sarah had predicted, Matt didn't show up at her window that night. Nothing new had happened that day for her to pass along anyway. With the vigilante still out of commission and her own brain screaming from sleep deprivation, she fell asleep as soon as she crawled into bed that night.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Sarah spent much of the next work day waiting to see if she was going to be called up to Jason's office for that meeting that he had so ominously promised they would have soon. But thankfully, the day passed uneventfully, with no more than the usual stress. However, the usual stress was enough to give her a bad headache. As she exited the subway station near her apartment she remembered that she was out of green tea, which was the only surefire way for her to get rid of a headache.

Sighing, she headed for the sketchy convenience store across the street from her building. She always went there, and it always smelled strongly of the bleach they used to clean the floors and the stale hotdogs that sat on the rotisserie near the counter all day. The fluorescent lights were too bright, and the night attendant was a teenage boy who had apparently never learned how to interact with other humans. But it was the only place that carried the tea she liked, and for cheap to.

She grabbed her usual tea from the shelf, then as an afterthought decided that she should pick up some Advil, as well. She felt her phone buzzing in her purse, so she fished it out and glanced at the screen as she made her way over to the farthest aisle. It was a text from Lauren.

_Dinner on Wednesday so we can talk about baby shower things?_

Sarah winced guiltily as she realized she hadn't really done anything to plan the shower yet. She'd have to make a guest list and a few other things before she met up with Lauren, or her friend would have an anxiety attack over the whole thing.

_Absolutely,_ Sarah texted her back, followed by suggestion a time and place. Lauren responded almost immediately, surprised and excited that Sarah had responded so much quicker than she usually did, and with an affirmative answer for plans, at that.

She glanced up from her phone as she turned down the aisle she needed, and blinked in surprise when she saw Matt standing in front of one of the shelves. It hadn't even been two whole days since he'd been injured; she'd expected him to still be couch-ridden. He was back to wearing his normal lawyer clothes, but he looked tired and not as put together as usual. He had removed his jacket, so he was wearing just a white button-down shirt, and he had loosened his tie and rolled up the sleeves. His white cane was leaning against the shelf in front of him.

She narrowed her eyes at him guardedly. Sarah had come to this convenience store a million times and never seen him there. Matt was holding two bottles of some kind of pills, one in each hand, and he looked like he was focusing intently on them. In fact, he didn't seem to notice her standing there, which surprised her. Hesitantly, she took a step closer, trying to figure out if he was just ignoring her or honestly didn't sense her. She stopped a few feet away from him, just in case.

"I thought Foggy would still have you on forced bed rest," she said tentatively.

Matt looked up sharply, clearly surprised by her presence. Almost like a normal blind person would be.

"Sorry," she said quickly. "I thought maybe you knew I was there. Figured you could…hear my blood pressure when I came in, or something."

"No. I, uh…I wasn't really listening," Matt said, and his voice still sounded tired, but stronger than the last time she'd seen him. He held the pill bottles up. "Focusing closely on one thing at a time is…kind of enough right now."

"You're here for…multivitamins?" Sarah asked slowly, squinting at the bottles.

He shook his head. "Iron supplements. That…is what these are, right?"

Now that she got a closer look, she could see that they were, indeed.

"Yeah, they are. Is that for your…" she trailed off and gestured vaguely in his general direction. She figured she probably shouldn't start talking about extreme blood loss in the middle of a convenience store, even if the only other people around were the spotty faced teenager behind the counter and the elderly couple he was ringing up.

Matt picked up on what she wasn't saying. "Yeah. For that. Claire suggested I take them. Well, ordered me to, is more accurate. I'm just, uh, trying to figure out which of these has a higher concentration."

Sarah wondered how, exactly, he was figuring that out. She was still trying to figure out how a lot of his abilities worked, and her best guess was that maybe he could smell the iron through the bottles. Still, he looked dead on his feet, and clearly whatever weird sensory thing he was doing was draining him.

"Do you…want some help?" she asked uncertainly.

He hesitated, and then held the bottles out to her. "Yeah, actually. That'd be…great."

She shifted the box of tea under her arm and took the two pill bottles, studying the labels. "Okay, well…this one only has fifty milligrams, while the other has sixty five. But, it also has vitamin B12, which I think is supposed to help you absorb iron, maybe?"

It sounded vaguely like something she had learned in school once, but she wasn't sure if it was accurate.

Matt nodded, frowning. "The second one sounds good, I guess."

Sarah handed him the bottle, then put the other one back on the shelf.

"Is this how you do all of your grocery shopping?" she asked curiously. "Just stand around, like…sniffing different cereal boxes to see what they are?"

Matt flashed one of his small, rare smiles, but it was a tired one. "Nah. Sometimes Foggy comes with me. Or other people offer to help. A lot of it is just memorizing where my usual items are. But I don't usually shop here. I was just stopping by on the way home from Mrs. Benedict's, actually."

Sarah raised her eyebrows. "Kind of soon to be back at work. Are you…back at your other job already, too?"

Matt shook his head. "Not yet. Tomorrow night, probably. And I'm not really back at the office, but Mrs. Benedict is, um…persistent. I said I needed to go to the store on the way home, so she suggested I stop by here."

"Mrs. B suggested you come to the Stab-N-Grab?" Sarah said, surprised. "Weird. She's hated this place ever since they stopped selling her favorite cigarette brand."

"The…Stab-N-Grab?" he repeated doubtfully, raising his eyebrows. "That can't possibly be what this place is called."

"No, I think it's called the…Snack-N-Shack? Or Snack-N-Pack. Pack-N-Shack?" She frowned thoughtfully as she tried to recall the proper name of the place. "I don't know, actually. I don't think I've ever heard anyone call it anything but the Stab-N-Grab. It gets held up a lot," she explained.

"Why do you come here, then?"

"They're the only ones who carry the tea I like," she said, holding up the small box she knew he couldn't see.

Matt tilted his head like he was trying to figure out if she was kidding. She shrugged awkwardly and lowered the box. It was good tea. As she glanced back up at him, she suddenly remembered what she had been going to ask him earlier.

"Hey, um…what kind of Bible do Catholics use?"

Matt seemed understandably thrown by the sudden shift in conversation. After a second of confusion, he sighed in irritation. "I'm guessing Foggy let you in on the fact that I'm Catholic?"

"Yeah," Sarah said guiltily.

"Do you know my social security number, too? What else did he tell you?"

Sarah thought of the portion of her conversation with Foggy that had focused around Matt's apparently very active love life, a concept which she still couldn't quite comprehend. "Uh…nothing much, really."

"Are you sure?" he asked her suspiciously.

"I asked my question first," she prompted hopefully.

He sighed again, but answered her question. "Not all Catholics use the same exact Bible. But most of them around here use the New American Bible. Or the Latin Vulgate, if they're traditional. Why?"

"So…not the King James Version, then?"

Matt shook his head. "No. That's Protestants. Why are you asking me about Bibles?"

"Just wondering," Sarah said distractedly, thinking about the still mysterious Bible in her father's living room. Matt's answer hadn't helped make anything clearer. She wasn't sure why she had thought it might. She shook her head wearily and held the box of tea up. "Um…I should probably go pay for this now."

"Does it…have anything to do with the Bible those men left at your father's?" Matt asked carefully, ignoring her attempt to excuse herself from the conversation.

Sarah frowned at him. She knew he had been listening that night—creepily eavesdropping from the roof of an apartment building _across the street_ —but she wasn't sure if he had really been paying attention to any parts of the conversation that didn't concern his identity.

"You, um…you heard that part?"

Matt nodded. "I heard everything up until…you went out on the balcony. I, um…I didn't think I needed to stick around after that," he said, and Sarah looked away as she realized that meant he had heard her crying on the balcony. "But I heard him talking about Jehovah's Witnesses. And something about it bothered you."

"Yeah," she said reluctantly. "It did. I just…Jehovah's Witnesses use the New World Translation. But these guys left my dad with a King James Bible. Which isn't, like, incredibly weird or anything, but it just seems…I don't know. Off. Maybe it's nothing."

"But you think it's something?" he asked slowly.

"Something about it feels wrong. But then, I tried mentioning them to Ronan yesterday, when he started talking about my dad. And he didn't seem to have any idea what I was talking about."

"Why was he talking about your father? Did they get suspicious? When you were late?"

"No. Not suspicious, just…annoyed. Pretty much anytime I mess up, Ronan starts talking about…my dad, and—and…what could happen to him," Sarah took a deep breath and directed her thoughts away from the memory of the unpleasant conversation. "Um. I mean, it's nothing new. It didn't really have anything to do with…this," she said, gesturing between them vaguely.

Matt wrinkled his brow as he contemplated what she had told him. She looked down at the box of tea in her hand, idly tracing the cheap gold lettering with her thumb.

"What about Jason? Has he said anything?"

"No, no. I haven't seen him since that whole thing with Yates' papers—"

"What do you mean?" Matt said sharply.

Sarah squinted at him in confusion before realizing that in all of the chaos with his injuries, she had never actually told him about the camera that caught her taking the papers, and the convoluted lies she had told Jason to cover up for it.

"Did something happen because you took the papers?"

"Um…maybe this isn't…the best place for us to talk about this," she said hesitantly, glancing around the convenience store. In reality, she wasn't particularly worried about being overheard in the clearly empty shop, but it was as good an excuse as any to further delay this particular conversation.

Matt tilted his head for a second, listening. "Store's empty. Just the cashier, and he's watching cartoons on his phone. Answer the question."

Sarah bit her lip at his tone. Their conversation so far had been civil, almost close to friendly, but obviously that was done. Maybe out in public was a good place to have this conversation, after all.

"Um…Jason called me into his office the other day," she began reluctantly, looking down at the tea box in her hands to avoid having to see the intense look Matt was focusing on her. "The—the day you got hurt. And he, um, he…informed me that a camera had caught me…taking the papers and the notebook from the box. Out back in the alley."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Matt briefly tilt his head back towards the ceiling in frustration.

"You got _caught?_ On _camera?_ " he said in disbelief.

Sarah winced. "I fixed it," she said quickly. "It's—it's fine now. I think."

"And you didn't think that any of this was something you should tell me?" he hissed.

"I was going to," she said defensively. "I got sidetracked digging tiny pieces of barbed wire out of you, remember?"

"How did you not see a camera watching you?"

"I didn't look because I didn't think there was one!" she exclaimed, before catching herself and lowering her voice again as she glanced around. "There were no outside cameras on the installation list I received. I thought I knew where they all were. A-and besides, what else should I have done? It's not like I could just bring the box back inside with me. There are definitely cameras in the hallway, and it would have looked just as suspicious for me to carry it back in. It was either take the papers or—or let it all get destroyed."

" _Sarah,_ " he groaned in aggravation. "You _have_ to be more careful than that."

"I know that," she snapped. "I'm—I'm not a professional spy, Matt. And anyway, you're one to talk about being careful. At least I didn't end up bleeding to death under a scaffolding because of my mistake."

She regretted the dig almost as soon as she said it. But surprisingly, it didn't seem to anger the vigilante. Instead, his irritation seemed to fade. He heaved a tired sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"You're right," he said finally, to her surprise. "We're…not doing great at this. Either of us. Are we?"

Sarah shrugged, gesturing to their surroundings and letting out a short laugh at the absurdity of the situation. "I mean…we are talking about top secret information in the vitamin aisle of a convenience store."

After a few seconds, Matt sighed and then cracked a small, tired grin.

"Yeah. We are. A convenience store called the Stab-N-Grab, no less," he agreed.

They were silent for a few moments, the only sound—for Sarah, at least—coming from an old Johnny Cash song that was playing over the tinny sound system.

"You said you took care of it?" Matt said finally. "I mean, I assume so. Since you seem fine."

"Yeah. It's…it's fixed."

"Fixed how?"

Sarah looked at him, and suddenly didn't want to tell him about the story she had spun about herself and Yates. She didn't want to talk about the whole new batch of problems that had presented themselves along with that choice, or the unsettling glint that hadn't left Ronan's eyes since she had told the lie.

"Just…just _fixed, _" she said weakly. "Redirected far away from anything that could lead to you. Can we just…leave it at that? It's not going to be a problem for you. I swear."__

__He tilted his head, studying her intently in that way he always did. She assumed he was listening to her heartbeat, but technically what she had said was true. It might end up being a problem, but not one that concerned him._ _

__"Alright," he said slowly, surprising her. "We'll leave it for now."_ _

__Sarah didn't miss the condition at the end of his sentence. But it was better than nothing, she supposed._ _

__"Thanks," she said quietly. After a pause, she gestured over her shoulder towards the register. "I, um…I'm going to go pay for this, now."_ _

__Matt nodded, and she started to turn away._ _

__"Sarah."_ _

__She looked back at him. He had an odd look on his face, like he was debating something._ _

__"I can…keep an eye on your dad's house. If you want me to," Matt said. Sarah looked up from the box of tea. "See if anyone suspicious stops by."_ _

__Sarah stared at him in surprise. "Um…you—you mean like, you'd be…at his place?"_ _

__"Somewhere nearby. Close enough to hear if anyone's coming to visit him. And what they want."_ _

__She hesitated. Her immediate instinct was to say no. If there was anything she wanted to avoid, it was having Matt and her father anywhere near each other. On the other hand, if there was anyone who was capable of protecting her father from Orion's hired goons, it was Daredevil. But she didn't know for sure if they even were from Orion, or if they really were just Jehovah's Witnesses and she was just crazy._ _

__Her indecision must have been obvious, because after a few moments of her not saying anything, he nodded in resignation and looked away from her._ _

__"I get it if you want me to stay away from him. I just…figured I'd offer."_ _

__Sarah bit her thumbnail, looking at him intently. He looked sincere enough. If he was planning to do something to her father, she could think of no reason for him to ask her permission to go over there first. He knew the address; he could easily show up there without her knowledge if he wanted to. So the offer seemed honest enough. But it was still undeniably a risky step._ _

__"Um…can I just…can I think about that?"_ _

__Matt shrugged. "Take your time," he said simply._ _

__Sarah contemplated the strange end to their conversation as she purchased her tea at the front counter. She emerged from the convenience store into the cool night air, feeling oddly unsettled._ _

__When Sarah was young, her father's gambling problems had sometimes led to an unstable living environment. He never put her in danger, but their life had always consisted of alternating periods of happy stability, quickly followed by periods of no money and a lot of stress. She had quickly learned that when things were going well, it was only a matter of time before the less pleasant times arrived. The sign she had always learned to look out for was her father taking her out for ice cream. He'd order her the largest size they had, in whatever flavors she wanted, and his demeanor would be overly cheerful the entire meal. At the very end, he would tell her that they would be staying in a motel for a few days, or with a cousin, or that they'd be home but she shouldn't answer the phone or the door. After a while, she learned to recognize the ice cream shop as the calm before the storm, and she dreaded going, but the ritual seemed to mean something to her father, so she went anyway._ _

__Right now, things were going suspiciously well, given the situation. Ronan had let her off fairly easily for being late, with just a few of his usual barbs, and with a minimal number of creepy, suggestive comments. Jason hadn't yet given any indication of following up on the meeting he had promised the two of them would have. Matt had reacted with surprising calm to the news of her total incompetence as a spy (perhaps due to the lingering effects of the concussion, but she'd take what she could get). She'd even get to see Lauren soon, and help plan something as normal as a baby shower, for once._ _

__Things were going well, and Sarah couldn't shake the feeling that she was sitting in that ice cream shop, waiting for the storm to roll in._ _

__~*~*~*~*~*~_ _

__As it turned out, the first signs of the storm would begin the very next night._ _

__"You'll be staying late tonight."_ _

__Sarah looked up at the sound of Ronan's voice. She furrowed her brow in bewilderment._ _

__"What?"_ _

__"You've been skipping work a lot lately, in case you didn't notice," Ronan informed her. "A long lunch a few weeks ago, and then a half day that one Friday. And now you come into work halfway through the workday. Tonight's as good a night as any for you to make up some of those hours, and we have a very special delivery coming."_ _

__"A delivery of what?" she asked suspiciously._ _

__He grinned widely, and the sight was unsettling. "I guess you'll see, huh?"_ _

__"Well, how late am I supposed to stay?" she asked, glancing at the clock. It was a quarter til five right now._ _

__Ronan whistled lowly. "I don't know. Delivery should get here in a few hours, but we're also waiting for someone to come, uh…pick it up, you could say. And that could take all night. Hope you're wearing comfortable heels."_ _

__Sarah stared at him in disbelief as he disappeared into the stairwell without another word._ _

__She debated calling Matt. She didn't actually know what the delivery was, so she wasn't sure how helpful it would really be to tell him, but it couldn't hurt. Around six, when no one had come through the door for a good fifteen minutes, she finally grabbed her phone and headed towards the front door._ _

__"Where are we sneaking off to?"_ _

__Sarah jumped as she heard Ronan's voice from behind her. He had come out of the stairwell just in time to see her trying to go out the front door._ _

__"Um, I was just—going to make a phone call. I—I had plans with my friend tonight," she stuttered._ _

__Ronan held out his hand. "That's too bad. But I think it's best you don't let anyone know you're staying late tonight. I'm sure your friend will figure out you aren't coming all on their own. I'll take the phone."_ _

__She hesitated, but didn't have much of a choice. Reluctantly, she gave her cell phone to him, silently thanking any and all deities that she had password protected it, with separate passwords for anything important: text messages, voicemail, recent calls, contacts. Even if Ronan did try to snoop in her phone, he wouldn't be able to access anything._ _

__Luckily, he seemed uninterested in looking through the phone. She watched him toss it on his desk before closing his door._ _

__"We're all done down here, anyway. Come with me."_ _

__She frowned at the closed door before following him upstairs with a deep feeling of dread. They ended up on the fifth floor, where well over a dozen men were milling around, all of them heavily armed. She stared around the room, wide-eyed._ _

__"What's going on?" she asked._ _

__Ronan ignored her as one of the men—a tall, balding man with a poorly done snake tattoo wrapping around his neck— approached him and handed him a suitcase._ _

__"Got the tranquilizers you asked for," the tattooed man said. "Pretty strong stuff."_ _

__"This'll work great," Ronan said, picking up one of the darts and examining it. "How many can he get hit with before he dies? Because I'd really like to keep him alive for a little while, if you get me."_ _

__Sarah watched him in growing alarm. She had a horrible feeling that she knew who they were referring to._ _

__The tattooed man shrugged. "I dunno. One or two should be enough to bring him down. Maybe four or five before his heart stops."_ _

__Ronan bared his yellow teeth in a vicious smile. "Good. And the delivery? Where is it?"_ _

__The man pointed towards the conference room, where the blinds were drawn. "In there."_ _

__"Come on," Ronan said to Sarah, jerking his head towards the room. She anxiously looked around the room full of armed men as she followed him over to it._ _

__When he opened the door, it looked at first like the room was empty. Then she turned towards the far right corner, and her heart dropped._ _

__There was a teenage girl, maybe no older than fourteen or fifteen, tied to a chair in the corner. She was pale, with long dark hair falling over her almond-shaped eyes, which watched them in terror from above the strip of duct tape that was covering her mouth._ _

__"What—what the hell is going on?" Sarah asked desperately, unable to stop looking at the girl._ _

__"This is our delivery. This is our ticket to getting the masked man."_ _

__"What?"_ _

__"Apparently, he got pretty upset when he found some old associates of ours holding a cop's kid in a warehouse a few days ago. Guess he's got a weak spot for kids, or something. So…we made sure to let enough people know that we'd be holding another officer's kid hostage here, tonight, at this time."_ _

__Sarah gave him an incredulous look._ _

__"How is that a good plan? Didn't he kick all of your asses last time he was here?" she asked, unable to stop herself._ _

__Ronan glared at her. "Well, last time, we didn't know he was coming, did we? This time, we do. We have more men, and back up waiting next door. And we've got these nice tranquilizer darts, which should be able to bring him down pretty easy, regardless of how many stupid karate moves he knows."_ _

__Sarah felt like the room was getting smaller. She took a few deep breaths, trying to calm herself. If Matt had heard the rumors about them keeping the girl here, he would undoubtedly come for her. And Sarah's only way of warning him was currently sitting on Ronan's desk downstairs._ _

__Ronan clearly misinterpreted her panic at the impending situation as fear of the masked vigilante that was sure to show up soon enough. He rolled his eyes in disgust._ _

__"Jesus, calm the hell down. You're just the babysitter. Make sure she doesn't get her hands free, and that she doesn't piss herself. It's an easy job. Even you can do it."_ _

__Sarah hadn't even registered that she'd be expected to take part in this plan. The panic tightening her chest grew worse._ _

__"What?" Sarah said in disbelief, looking between Ronan and the girl. "I don't—you can't be serious."_ _

__"Oh, I'm dead serious. Babysit her, and then when the masked asshole shows up, your entire job is just to make sure that brat doesn't get out of that room until we're done taking care of him. If you do everything right, you'll never even come into contact with him. No need to hide under any desks. Understood?"_ _

__"No, not understood," Sarah exclaimed. "This—this is kidnapping, y-you can't ask me to—"_ _

__"Ask you? No one's asking. This is part of your job, sweetheart," Ronan said condescendingly. "You might technically be a secretary, but your job description is basically to do whatever the hell I tell you to. And right now, I'm telling you to watch that girl while the rest of us do the actual hard part. Got it?"_ _

__"What…what's going to happen to her after—after Daredevil comes?"_ _

__Ronan shrugged. "I'm sure we'll find something to do with her. None of your concern."_ _

__"You don't think kidnapping a cop's kid and bringing her to the office is going to seem suspicious for the company?" she asked, desperately trying to keep him talking while she thought through her options._ _

__"She ain't really a cop's kid," Ronan said slowly, like he was talking to someone very dim. "Just some girl we found near the docks. Doesn't even speak English. Probably no one in this country to even notice she's gone. Just figured this seemed like a more believable story to get him here. "_ _

__Sarah looked at the teenage girl again, and her heart twisted. The girl looked terrified, and she couldn't even understand what they were saying about her._ _

__Ronan checked his watch. "It's a little after eight right now. From what we hear, the mask usually comes out around this time. Should be showing up soon enough. Stay in here, watch the girl."_ _

__He opened the door and smirked as he looked back at her stunned expression._ _

__"Feel free to open the blinds if you want," he said, indicating the blinds over the windows separating the conference room from the rest of the office. "Should be a good show."_ _


	11. The Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that I took so long to update! I swear that when I left that cliffhanger, I didn't know it would be weeks before I'd have a chance to update. Don't hate me! I made this chapter extra long to make up for it.
> 
> There is some violence in this chapter that kind of pushes at the T-rating on this story, just as a heads up.

Suitably, the weather outside decided to match the atmosphere inside the building, and as Sarah paced around the conference room, the stormy sky began to release a torrent of rain outside. The thunder and lightning began not too long after, completing the tense mood.

It had been about forty-five minutes since Ronan's ominous prediction, and Sarah's mind was still anxiously racing as she tried to figure out how this night could possibly end with her, Matt, and the teenage girl all alive. She knew Matt wasn't in top fighting condition right now. Even beyond the obvious injuries, he was probably still concussed, and it had been clear in the market the night before that his senses weren't currently as sharp as they could be. On the other hand, Ronan's plan was painfully transparent, and Matt wasn't dumb. She assumed he'd probably figure out it was a trap on his own; but that didn't mean he wouldn't show up anyway.

Sarah apprehensively glanced out the window at the pouring rain, and as lightning flickered across the sky she thought she saw the outline of a dark figure on the rooftop next door. She sat up straighter and squinted, waiting for the next flash of lightning; but when it came, the rooftop was empty. But she was sure she had seen it. An idea crossed her mind; it seemed like a long shot, but she figured it couldn't hurt.

"Matt?" Sarah began uncertainly in a hushed tone. She kept her face down, still turned towards the dark window so that Ronan and the others wouldn't be able to see her mouth moving. "I really hope you can hear me. Um, I'm pretty sure you've probably already caught on that this is a trap. I didn't have anything to do with it," she added quickly, glancing up at the ceiling like she expected him to drop down on her.

She felt silly talking to no one, with no guarantee that the person she was addressing could even hear her. Doing so felt oddly similar to praying, which had always had the similar effect of making her feel ridiculous. But if there was any chance Matt could hear her, she had to at least try to warn him.

"There's about fifteen guys in here, and I think more next door. They have all these weapons and—and tranquilizer darts. Strong ones," she continued quietly. She glanced over at the bound girl in the corner, who was watching her in confusion, probably wondering why she was talking to herself. "They kidnapped a girl, and I don't know how I can get her out. Ronan took my phone, and—"

As though Ronan could sense she was talking about him, Sarah was interrupted by a small clinking sound as a pen bounced off the glass separating the room she was in from the rest of the floor. She looked over to see the greasy man in question beckoning her out into the main office lazily.

"Make yourself useful," Ronan called out to her when she opened the door. "Go get some drinks for us from the break room downstairs. This guy's taking forever to get here."

Sarah glanced back at the conference room, not crazy about leaving the teenage girl alone with Ronan and the other men while she went downstairs. But if Matt was here, then the timing was perfect; maybe she could speak louder if she was on a different floor. And it wasn't like she could do much to protect the girl from Ronan or the others anyway.

"I thought you wanted me to watch the hostage," Sarah pointed out, not wanting to seem too eager to get away.

"She'll be fine for five minutes. How long does it take you to grab some drinks? Do you need a map?" Ronan said mockingly, and a few of the guys sitting near him snickered.

Sarah barely registered the condescending comment as she disappeared down the stairs. She had just exited the stairwell on the floor below and was heading towards the break room kitchen, debating whether or not to try calling out to Matt again, when without warning the lights went out and the entire building was plunged into darkness. Sarah stopped in her tracks, raising her eyes to the ceiling.

She heard a muffled commotion above her as Ronan's men reacted to the darkness with surprise. The office building was sandwiched closely between two taller buildings, allowing light in only from the streetlights out front, which were too weak to illuminate more than a few feet of office space in front of the windows. The rest of the office was lost in total darkness.

Sarah waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark and listened to the muffled footsteps upstairs, trying to pinpoint if any of them belonged to the vigilante. She slowly started moving away from the weak light of the windows, towards where she thought the staircase door was, extending her hand out clumsily to find the wall for guidance.

Suddenly, she felt a strong arm snake around her waist from behind, pulling her back against a firm chest, and a hand settled over her mouth, muffling the startled yelp she let out at the contact.

"Don't scream," came a familiar low voice in her ear. "It's me."

Sarah closed her eyes briefly in relief. She nodded, and Matt slowly took his hand off her mouth and turned her around so that she was facing him. She could barely make out his shadowy form in the dark, despite him being only inches in front of her.

"I swear I didn't know they were planning this," she said quickly. "I tried to warn you—"

"I know. I heard your message," Matt said. "Figured I'd come find you."

Sarah glanced up nervously at the general area where she knew the security camera was, not wanting to be recorded casually chatting with Daredevil. There would probably be no talking her way out of that one. "Are the cameras out too, or just the lights?"

"Everything. I cut the power. Don't need them to have any extra advantages tonight," he said, and her stomach dropped as she realized he must be having doubts about his fighting abilities as well. She had really been hoping that it was just her. "I already took care of the reinforcements next door. They're barricaded into the building; they won't be able to get out in time to be a problem."

"Well, that's good, but that still leaves nearly fifteen guys up there guarding the girl, Matt," Sarah said anxiously. "And you were literally passed out on your couch from injuries just a couple of days ago. Please tell me you have some sort of master plan, here."

Matt didn't say anything, which was less than reassuring. He tilted his face up towards the ceiling, and she assumed he was listening to the noise upstairs.

"Is there just the one staircase?" he asked her.

"Yeah…why?" she answered slowly.

"Elevator's out. Stairs are the only way down. Shouldn't be too hard to draw them down here, and then I can use the stairwell as a bottleneck. They can only fit through the stairwell door by two, maybe three men at a time. I can handle that," Matt said.

Sarah chewed the inside of her cheek nervously. It seemed like a shaky plan—if it could even count as a plan—but it made more sense than him heading directly into the trap laid out for him upstairs, at least. And he'd have the advantage of the almost complete darkness enveloping the building.

She jumped when she felt his gloved hand on her upper arm.

"Come with me." Matt started quickly leading her through the room, towards the stairwell. He was moving swiftly, and in the darkness she was clumsy and disoriented. She stumbled over a cord on the floor, and he caught her other arm, easily steering her around the obstacles in the room. The irony of being led through the dark by a blind man momentarily crossed her mind, before being brushed aside by more important matters.

Matt let go when they made it to the corner about ten feet past the door to the stairwell, where the weak light from the streetlamps didn't reach.

"You should be safe here. When they come out of the stairwell, they'll be going the other way, towards me. Stay low to the ground," he said firmly. "Don't scream. And don't move until I come get you."

Sarah nodded, her stomach twisting in trepidation as the oncoming fight got that much closer.

A flash of lightning lit up the room, and she blinked in surprise when she saw that Matt was no longer standing in front of her. She jumped at the accompanying thunder and squinted around as darkness fell over the room again, but she couldn't place him among any of the shadows.

There was a loud crash of shattering glass as a chair flew through one of the windows on the opposite side of the room. The footsteps on the floor above her quickened as the armed men rushed to come downstairs. She supposed this was what Matt had meant when he said it'd be easy to get their attention.

The door to the staircase flew open, and Sarah quickly slid down the wall as another flash of lightning illuminated the room. She was far enough away from the windows that the lightning didn't touch the shadows concealing her hiding place, but with the staircase between her and the windows she was able to briefly see the outline of three men emerging from the doorway.

She could hear the sounds of fighting start immediately: blows landing and strangled yelps of pain being cut off suddenly. She saw the silhouettes of the first two men go down almost immediately. Matt might be injured, but the darkness was his territory, and it was clearly helping him regain the upper hand. One of the men still in the stairwell was apparently smart enough to try turning his phone's built-in flashlight, because a beam of light illuminated Matt mid-kick as he slammed his foot into his opponent's chest, sending the larger man flying backwards into the stairwell. It seemed to create some sort of domino effect as Sarah heard a few bodies tumble backwards down the stairs, including whoever had been aiming the flashlight.

A few more men poured out of the small doorway, and from the sound of it Matt was dispatching them just as steadily. He wasn't moving as fast as he had been the last time he'd crashed a meeting at Orion, but he wasn't losing either. She could hear a small _thwick_ as one of Ronan's goons repeatedly shot his dart gun at the vigilante, whose silhouette she could see against the window, agilely flipping out of the way. Whoever was shooting the dart gun yelled in pain, and there was a loud clatter as the tranquilizer gun flew out of his hand and skidded across the floor, landing a few feet away from Sarah.

Sarah impulsively leaned forward and snatched the gun before retreating back to her shadowy hiding place. Of course, she had no idea how to actually use the thing, and she didn't dare try to shoot any of the men that Matt was fighting. She could only see vague outlines against the light from the windows, save for when lightning illuminated the room. They were all moving too fast—either of their own accord or because Matt was knocking them around—for her to be able to aim without risking hitting Matt himself.

She could still hear footsteps in the stairwell, but they were getting farther away. Some of the men were making a run for it, she realized. She would bet everything she owned that Ronan was one of them.

It seemed for a minute like there were no more coming, but then a large shape shuffled out of the stairwell, looking oddly misshapen, as though it had too many limbs. She realized with a sinking sensation that it was one of Ronan's men—possibly the giant Russian—holding the teenage hostage in front of him like a small human shield.

"Hey!" he yelled in a heavily accented voice. Definitely the large Russian. "Don't move! I've got the girl, and I swear to god I will cut her throat open!"

She couldn't see well enough in the dark to tell how Matt reacted to the threat. The sounds of the fight faltered, but didn't stop; even if Matt wanted to get to the girl, the three men fighting him weren't about to stop. The man's back was to Sarah, and he was stupidly waving the knife around as he made his threats, instead of keeping it at the girl's throat.

Sarah's eyes fell on the shadowy outline of a fire extinguisher about two feet to her left. As quietly as possible, she took a few steps closer to it, hoping that the men fighting Matt would be too busy to see what was about to happen. Lightning lit up the room, and she waited for the thunder to follow and mask the sound and she lifted the extinguisher from its place.

She swung hard and the fire extinguisher connected with the man's skull with a sickening metal thud. But her swing wasn't strong enough, and he just staggered forward, disoriented but not unconscious. However, it did the job of making him release the teenage girl, who stumbled away from his grip. Before the large man could turn towards Sarah, Matt appeared in front of him, catching him under the chin with a sharp uppercut and then yanking his head down to connect with his knee. Sarah lurched forward and grabbed the younger girl's arm, pulling her away from the blur of shadows as the two men fought.

Another streak of lightning, just enough to see the outlines of the last two men left standing, not including the large Russian that Matt was fighting. Both of them had tranquilizer guns in their hands and were firing in Matt's general direction. But they didn't have the advantage of a lit window to frame their targets like Sarah's angle did, and their darts were missing by several feet.

The teenage girl was struggling against Sarah's grip in panic, obviously not understanding that Sarah was trying to help her. She thrashed violently as Sarah tried to keep them both in the shadows and out of sight.

"Shh—please, stop—you have to stay here—it's not safe yet—" Sarah hissed desperately, trying to keep a grip on the girl's arms, but she kept flailing wildly until Sarah's fingers slipped away. Before Sarah could react, the younger girl was making a mad dash across the room.

She made it about halfway across the room before two stray darts hit her almost simultaneously; one in the neck and one in her side. She stumbled immediately as the tranquilizer moved quickly through her small frame. Sarah watched in horror as the girl swayed for a few moments and then dropped, unconscious. Her head bounced off the floor with a disturbing crack.

At almost the same time, Matt landed a final blow and the Russian man fell to the ground. His defeat seemed to rattle the other two men, who quickly darted through the stairwell door and down the stairs, leaving only Sarah and Matt with several unconscious bodies, including the young girl.

Sarah scrambled over to the girl and dropped to her knees next to the her, checking her pulse with shaking hands. The heartbeat pulsing beneath her skin felt thready and sluggish. She remembered the tattooed man saying that four darts would be enough to stop Daredevil's heart; this girl was less than half his size, and she'd been hit by two.

She heard footsteps as Matt approached. He was moving gingerly, having clearly re-opened some of his wounds and probably earned a few more.

"We—we need to call an ambulance," she told him frantically, looking up at his shadowy outline.

"They're already coming. Cops, too. I can hear the sirens."

"Her heart's going to stop," Sarah whispered blankly, looking back down at the teenager. "Oh, my god. She's going to die."

"No, she's not," he said firmly, taking her by the arm and pulling her to her feet. "They'll get here in time. And you need to get out of here before that happens."

"What—what about you, aren't you coming?"

"Soon," he said. "I need to make sure none of these guys wakes up and does anything stupid before the cops get here."

Sarah glanced down at the girl on the floor, barely able to see her in the dim light coming through the windows. Her breathing was so shallow that Sarah couldn't even see her chest rising or falling. She tried not to think about how soon her heart might stop if the paramedics didn't arrive quickly enough.

"What if they come after her in the hospital?" Sarah asked worriedly.

"I know someone on the police force," Matt said. "I'll tell him to put a detail of clean cops on her room."

Finally, Sarah was able to hear the sirens too, meaning they must be closer. A few blocks away, maybe.

"Sarah. You need to go. Now."

With a last glance at the unconscious girl, Sarah turned and ran towards the stairwell. When she got to the ground level she snatched her purse from behind her desk, hurriedly tossing into it the tranquilizer gun she hadn't even realized she as still holding. Then she took an extra few seconds to dip into Ronan's office and grab her cell phone off the desk before darting out the door and into the rainy night, not slowing down until she got to the subway station.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The next day, the aftermath of Ronan's plan going awry ended up being worse than expected. As Sarah had predicted, Ronan had been one of the men who had turned tail and ran away when the situation went downhill. The small bright side was that when Sarah claimed that she, too, had run from the scene, no one seemed to doubt it. Only a few of the men from the night before had been arrested, if they happened to have outstanding warrants. Beyond that, the cops had no proof of a crime, beyond the unconscious teenage girl that no one claimed to know about, and they were suspiciously slow to investigate further. From the gossip going around the place, it sounded like the girl had yet to wake up, and that she did have the police detail Matt had promised, much to Ronan's displeasure.

Now it was close to eight o'clock the next night, and Sarah was still at Orion. For the second night in a row, she had been told to stay hours late, but at least this time she knew why. Jason had been out of town for the last couple of days, and he got back in tonight. He'd made it clear that he wanted to see Ronan as soon as he got back; the discussion of what had happened last night apparently couldn't wait til morning. And Ronan, ever the petulant child, had informed Sarah that if he had to stay late to meet with Jason, she sure as hell wasn't allowed to go home.

So she found herself still doing paperwork three hours past when she was supposed to have gone home, waiting for Ronan to return from his meeting upstairs with Jason so she could leave.

Finally, she heard Ronan coming down the stairs. He burst through the stairwell door forcefully, making her jump, then stalked straight by her and into his office. She could hear him rummaging around, slamming drawers and cabinets. Not sure what was going on, but thinking it best to stay out of the way, she tried to focus on her paperwork again.

It was only a few minutes before Ronan came back out, carrying a cardboard box and scowling furiously.

"You know what this is?" Ronan demanded.

Sarah looked at him blankly. "A…box?"

"Yeah. A box full of my things. I've been suspended until they decide whether or not to fire me, because the big bosses don't like the fact that the girl got away. And do you remember whose job it was to watch her?" Ronan snapped, glaring at her.

Sarah frowned defensively. "I _was_ watching her, until _you_ told me to go downstairs and get you drinks—"

Ronan slammed the box down on her desk, causing her to jump. "You really think I feel like hearing you bitch at me right now? Like this is all my fault?"

She didn't say anything as she watched him. His face was turning an ugly reddish purple color, and she wondered briefly if he was going to have a heart attack.

"Because you couldn't do one simple thing and watch the stupid brat, _I_ get in trouble?" he demanded. "Does that seem fair to you, Sarah?"

He suddenly reached into the cardboard box and grabbed a glass paperweight, hurling it directly at her face. She ducked to the side just in time, feeling it whiz past her temple before it the wall behind her head and exploded into pieces.

Snapping her head back up, she stared at him in shock.

"What the hell?" she exclaimed.

"You would think that after how many year I've been with this company, they'd actually give me someone competent," he snarled at her. "And not some dumb bitch who can't focus on anything other than her dead boyfriend and her pathetic dad—"

"It is not my fault that the girl got away," Sarah argued before she could stop herself, adrenaline pumping through her from the near miss of the paperweight. "You're the one who came up with this stupid plan that everyone knew wouldn't work—"

Without warning, Ronan lunged across the desk and grabbed a fistful of her hair, hauling her violently out of her chair.

"You don't talk to me like that. I deserve some respect in this place—"

Sarah yelped in pain, clawing at his hands. He dragged her around the desk by her hair and swung her roughly into the filing cabinet. She stumbled into one of the open drawers, and the sharp metal corner bit into the skin on her lower back. She could feel blood running down her back as she tried to regain her balance. But as soon as she was standing up straight, she felt the heavy blow of Ronan's fist against her face, and she hissed as one of the large, tacky rings he always wore cut into her cheek.

"Is this what it takes to get you to listen?" Ronan spat out as Sarah reeled from the hit. Clearly, his ruined plan and the consequences of it had pushed him over the edge, and as his anger spiraled out of control it all ended up being aimed at her. He hit her again, this time a hard backhand, and she could barely hear his next words over the ringing in her ears. "Huh? Is this how Yates won you over? Everyone knows he liked to slap his girlfriends around. Is this what you like?"

Ronan pinned her against the filing cabinet, causing the open wound on her back to gape painfully as she tried to twist out of his hold. She knew what he was going to do seconds before he did it; could see the crazed, predatory look in his eyes. and crushed his lips against hers. His breath tasted like cigarettes and rum, and the mixture made her want to gag. He pulled at her shirt, ripping the sleeve, and his fingers dug into her arm harshly until his fingernails broke the skin.

Sarah bit down hard on his lip, and immediately the metallic taste of blood flooded her mouth. Ronan jerked away, and before she could move he backhanded her across the mouth, making her snap her head to the side. She felt his hand roughly grab her hair and yank her head back so that she was looking at him again. She swung at him wildly and felt her right fist connect with his nose with a satisfying crack.

Blood poured from Ronan's nose and he swore, but didn't let go of her hair. Sarah kept hitting him, anywhere she could reach, with both fists now, ignoring the pain that shot through her hands. He was still shouting at her, but she wasn't listening to the words anymore. It wasn't until she managed to knee him in the groin that he finally let go, violently pushing her away from him so that she fell backwards. Her hands automatically stretched out to break her fall, and they landed directly on the pile of broken glass from the paperweight, which embedded themselves deeply into both of her palms. Her left wrist twisted the wrong way on impact, sending a jolt of pain up her arm.

She gasped in pain as the glass shards cut into her skin, but she barely had time to register the pain before she felt a rough hand around her throat, hauling her back into a standing position. Ronan didn't release her once she was standing, instead tightening his grip around her neck. Black spots danced in her vision as he brought both hands up to completely enclose her throat.

"You just broke my nose, you stupid bitch—"

Sarah desperately fumbled around on the desk to her right, grabbing the first heavy item she touched: a metal stapler. She ignored the sharp pain in her hand as the stapler pushed the glass deeper into her skin and swung it at Ronan's face as hard as she could. The stapler swung open and the sharp metal teeth connected with his face, tearing into the delicate tissue below his eye.

Ronan screamed as she pulled the stapler away. Its metal teeth had embedded deeply into his flesh upon impact, and it tore his skin open when she yanked it away, sending a stream of blood gushing down his face in its wake. Sarah felt a quick flash of something that almost resembled triumph at the sight. She weighed the bloody stapler in her hand, breathing unevenly and ready to swing at him again if he stepped closer, when she heard a cool voice come from behind him.

"Alright, I think that's enough," she heard a cool voice come from behind Ronan. "No rough-housing on company property."

Ronan turned slowly, and from behind his large form she saw Jason leaning against the wall near the stairwell, calmly watching the two of them. From the looks of it he had been there for most—if not all—of the attack. He was wearing his usual sharp suit and white tie, but for once, his face was absent of its usual unnerving smile. Instead he regarded both of them disdainfully, looking almost bored by the situation.

"Go home, Ronan," he said in exasperation, as though he were speaking to a small, misbehaving child, and not a violent man who had just tried to kill someone. "Before we have to extend your suspension even more."

As he spoke, Sarah finally noticed the two large men standing near Jason; they looked to be bodyguards of some sort. It was clear that they, too, had witnessed what had just happened without stepping in. In fact, one of them was lazily finishing off a cigarette as he observed them.

Ronan snarled, looking between Jason and the bodyguards, before grabbing the box and giving Sarah a last, murderous look as he exited the building.  
"That's it?" Sarah said incredulously, jerking her head towards Ronan's retreating form as she leaned heavily against the wall and cradled her bleeding hands. "You—you just threaten to suspend him longer? He was going to _kill_ me! He j-just tried to—"

"I suspended Ronan half an hour ago," Jason said dispassionately. "Technically, this spat took place while he was no longer on the payroll, so it's none of my concern. And let's what our tone, shall we?"

Sarah stared at him, dumfounded. She felt like he was playing some elaborate joke on her, but the punchline didn't come. She brought a shaking hand up to wipe the blood away from her lip, nervously glancing at the two bodyguards. She didn't respond, not wanting to instigate any more violence. Her adrenaline was starting to fade, and the fresh cuts and bruises covering her body were growing more insistent.

"But I understand that you're upset," he continued, reaching into his the pocket of his suit jacket and pulling out a few bills, which he tossed on the desk between them. "So why don't you call a cab. Take tomorrow off. When you come in on Friday, we'll talk. There's going to be some changes in your role while Ronan is gone."

Jason didn't wait for her to reply. Instead he just nodded to his bodyguards and the three of them disappeared through the door to the stairwell. Sarah wiped the blood away from her mouth and listened to their echoing footsteps as they ascended the stairs.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Whoa. Lady. I'm guessing you want me to take you to the hospital?"

Sarah shook her head, avoiding the cab driver's eyes as she slid into the back seat.

"Um…no," she said quietly, giving him her address instead.

"Are you sure? You look like shit. No offense."

She was sure she did. She had stopped in the women's restroom briefly before calling the cab, remembering that there was a small first aid kit in the cabinet in there. She hadn't found much in there beyond a few strips of gauze, which she'd wrapped around her hands after picking out the larger shards of glass and rinsing the wounds out in the sink. She had carefully avoided looking at her reflection in the mirror, not wanting to see the blood and bruise she knew were covering her skin.

"I'm sure."

The cab driver glanced back at her in the mirror occasionally as he drove, clearly worried by both her physical appearance and her demeanor. Distractedly, Sarah pulled out her phone. The time was a little before nine. She had one missed call from Matt, which she ignored when she saw several missed calls from Lauren, and a voicemail.

Dammit, she thought, leaning her head back against the cheap vinyl seat. It was Wednesday night, and she had stood Lauren up for their dinner. She winced guiltily as she opened the voicemail.

_"Okay…it's officially an hour past when we were supposed to meet, and you aren't answering my calls. I'm going home. I don't…I mean, you actually seemed excited to meet up with me and plan things tonight. I thought maybe this was a step back to normal. My baby's due in less than a month, Sarah, and I just…I feel like you don't even care. You and I always talked about how we'd pick out baby clothes for each others' kids, and look up stupid names in the baby name books. But instead you're just a voicemail greeting. All the time. I think—I think maybe it was a mistake asking you to throw the baby shower. Just…don't worry about it, okay? I'll see if my mom can plan it. Bye."_

Sarah squeezed her eyes shut as the message ended. She'd known Lauren for years, and had heard her sound all different kinds of upset—angry, furious, heartbroken. But she had never heard her sound so disappointed and distant. Not towards her. The thought made Sarah's heart twist painfully in her chest.

They pulled up to her apartment and she exited the cab, leaving the well-meaning, worried cab driver behind with a handful of the last of her cash. As she approached her door, she fumbled with her keys, trying to get safely inside the privacy of her apartment before she started crying. But tears were already starting to blur her vision, and she missed the lock once, twice, three times before finally getting the door open. Once inside, she threw her purse against the wall in frustration, where it opened and spilled all of its contents out on the floor.

"What happened to you?" came a voice from the other side of the dark room.

Sarah jumped and whipped around to see a familiar outline in front of the window to the fire escape. For a split second she had thought it was Ronan. But there was only one person who ever showed up at her apartment in the middle of the night, and it wasn't someone she particularly wanted to deal with right now.

"Jesus. What are you doing in here, Matt?" she demanded, wiping her eyes hurriedly. "You can't just—just come into people's apartments without their permission."

"I wouldn't be able to if you'd lock your window," he pointed out.

"Well, God forbid someone might be able to get in who wants to hurt me," she snapped pointedly, fumbling along the wall until she found the light switch and flicked the lights on. "What, are you waiting for me to get home so you can yell at me for not answering your calls again?"

"No. I heard you coming upstairs when I got close to your building. You're bleeding," he said, starting to come closer.

Sarah reacted instinctively, holding a warning hand out in front of her as she stepped back, and her keys jangled slightly as her hands shook. "No, you just…just stay away from me."

Matt stopped a few feet away from her, seemingly thrown by her harsh tone. "Is this from someone at Orion? Did you get caught?"

She gave him an incredulous look. " _No_ , Matt. I didn't get caught, I would be _dead_ if I had gotten caught. Jesus Christ, your—your precious secret is fine, okay?"

"Sarah," he said in a carefully even tone, ignoring the barb. "Tell me who did this. What happened to you?"

"What happened? Ronan got suspended over his stupid plot to catch you, and he took it out on me for letting that girl get away, is what happened. And—and everyone just stood around and _watched_ , and Jason just acted like it was totally _normal_ —"

"Ronan attacked you?" Matt interrupted.

"Oh, my God. Don't pretend like you _care_ , Matt," she said with a laugh that sounded harsh and bitter even to her own ears. She couldn't stop her voice from going up an octave, which was never a good sign that her emotions were under control. "Isn't—isn't this pretty much what you've always threatened to do? What, are you upset that he got around to it before you did?"

"That's not—I've never done anything like this to you," he argued. "You're bleeding all over the place; you need to go to the hospital."

He took a step closer to her, extending his hand out, but she backed away immediately.

" _Don't touch me_ ," she snapped.

Matt stopped again, frowning. She knew she was probably coming dangerously close to crossing some sort of line, but she didn't care. Something painful and vicious and uncontrollable was welling up inside her chest, and she didn't think she could control it.

"I'm not trying to hurt you," he said slowly, retracting his hand.

"Yeah? A-and how am I supposed to know when you are and aren't trying to hurt me? It seems to change every day. What—what are the rules, here? What makes you any different from Ronan?" Sarah asked harshly. She was barely even listening to what she was saying. She didn't even know if she meant it; but she knew that she wanted to lash out at something, and Matt and their history seemed as good a subject as any.

"Don't say that," Matt said forcefully.

"Why not?" Sarah bit out, angrily wiping her eyes with her wrist. "S-so, what, you can flip your shit on me whenever you want, but he can't? Exactly who's allowed to hurt me and who's not? Is there a list somewhere? Can—can someone give me a copy of it? That'd be great."

"Sarah, calm down—" Matt began, but she cut him off.

"Don't tell me to calm down!" she exclaimed. "Don't—why would I calm down? Nothing in my life is calm! I've managed to screw up everything that matters to me, all for—for someone who won't even remember it. I don't want to _do_ this anymore, Matt. How—how much of my life do I have to give away to all of this? Is there even going to be anything worth going back to, or is it all just going to get swallowed up?"

Sarah's voice cracked at the end of her sentence, and for some reason the sound of it made her even angrier. All she wanted was to be alone and away from Matt. Without thinking, she found herself trying to brush past him, to go lock herself in her bathroom, or her bedroom, or anywhere that he wasn't around.

"Sarah, wait—"

Matt caught her arm lightly as she tried to move past him, unintentionally grasping the exact same spot that Ronan had dug his fingers into earlier. The feeling of her arm being grabbed in that same place snapped whatever thin thread was still holding Sarah together. She jerked away from Matt and reflexively lashed out at his face, her keys still in her hand. The heavy bottle opener she kept attached to her key ring connected hard against his mouth with a loud crack, making him take a surprised step back.

For a long moment, neither of them moved.

Sarah's hands slowly came up to cover her mouth, letting her keys fall to the floor with a clatter, and she stared at him with wide eyes as she registered what she had just done—and more importantly, who she had just done it to.

"Shit," she whispered.

Matt's head was bowed, and she could see a few small drops of blood fall from his lip and hit the ground. She watched as he slowly reached up a gloved hand to wipe them away, his shoulders rising and falling with the carefully controlled breathing that she had learned was generally a bad sign. As he turned his masked face up towards her, she snapped out of her shocked state.

She hastily backed away from him, holding her hands out in front of her defensively. The anger that had just been coursing through her veins was gone, replaced by a racing panic. She'd just barely made it out of her last violent encounter, and here she was instigating another one, with someone she was much less likely to be able to get away from.

" _Shit_. I'm sorry," she said quickly, stumbling over her own feet as she retreated. "I'm sorry. Matt. D-don't—"

In her haste to put more space between them, she accidentally backed up into the short bookshelf that sat low along the wall, hitting the corner at just the right angle that it pulled painfully at the open wound on her back. She gasped and doubled over slightly, clutching at the bleeding area.

When she looked back up at Matt, he hadn't come any closer. Instead he was standing in the same spot, still facing her but not moving. If she hadn't known he was blind under the mask, she would've thought he was staring at her; instead, she knew he was scrutinizing her in his own way. When he finally spoke, his tone was surprisingly low.

"Sit down," he said quietly, gesturing towards the couch. For a minute Sarah thought she must have misheard him. When she didn't move he sighed and added, "Please."

Sarah knew that beneath the mask, he probably had his eyebrows raised expectantly as he waited for her to comply. She wasn't sure what he was playing at, but considering she had just hit him in the face, it seemed best not to argue. Hesitantly, she made her way around the couch and sat down, keeping her eyes trained on him.

Once she was seated, Matt paced the area across her living room for a minute, and she watched his agitated movements nervously. He had both hands on his hips, and he opened his mouth a few times like he was going to say something, but closed it again. His lip was still bleeding from where her keys had caught him, but he didn't seem to be paying it any attention. In fact, he didn't seem to be reacting much at all to what had just happened, and didn't know if that was relieving or alarming.

Finally, with a deep sigh of frustration, he slowly approached the couch and sat down next to her, deliberately leaving a couple feet of space between them. Then, to her surprise, he reached up and pulled his mask off, tossing it onto the coffee table and running his hand through his hair restlessly. Of all the times he had been in her apartment, he'd never removed his mask; the only time she'd seen his entire face was the night she'd stitched him up. She regarded him cautiously as he rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands together, bowing his head so that his sightless gaze was aimed at the floor.

They sat side by side in silence for what felt like a long time, with just the occasional muffled car horn from below breaking the quiet. She occasionally glanced over at him in confusion, wondering if what he was waiting for. Slowly the fear that had just been coursing through her faded away, replaced by the kind of exhaustion that only comes after a quick succession of powerful emotions: anger, fear, panic.

"Sorry," she said softly after a while, staring at the bloody bandages on her hands. Now that the wave of desperate anger that had overtaken her had subsided, she just felt confused and miserable, and her complete break down earlier didn't make her feel any better.

"Don't apologize."

She raised her eyebrows as she glanced over at him. "I busted your lip."

"I know."

"That's generally something you apologize for."

"Yeah, well…a few more hits like that and maybe we can call it even," he said.

She knitted her brow in confusion, not sure how to interpret that comment.

"I don't get you." Sarah winced as she realized she'd said that out loud.

Matt smirked faintly at that and gave a small shrug. "Likewise."

They sat in silence for a few more minutes. Sarah tiredly started to lower her face into her hands, but jerked her head back up when the action both pulled at the cuts on her palms and sent a sharp jolt of pain through her left wrist. The pained movement didn't go unnoticed by the vigilante.

"You need to get your injuries taken care of," he said. "You should go to the hospital. You could tell them you got mugged."

"I don't have health insurance," Sarah said, shaking her head. "They're not…not that bad anyway. I'm fine. I can do something about them later."

"Yeah? Because from what I can tell, you have a pretty nasty cut somewhere on your back that I'm betting will be hard for you to reach," Matt pointed out. "Not to mention the rest of you. And you're not going to be able to clean and bandage your hands properly with both of them wounded."

She didn't respond, just looked away and wrapped her arms around her waist self-consciously, not liking that he could tell the severity of her injuries without even being able to see her. It made her feel like she was being x-rayed.

When it became clear she wasn't planning on answering, he sighed in frustration.

"You have a first-aid kit?"

"Yeah," she replied, then looked over at him and realized he was waiting expectantly for her to tell him where it was. "Oh. Oh…no, um, you don't have to—"

"I'm not really asking," he informed her. Between his tone and the set look on his face, there didn't seem to be much point in arguing. And she couldn't really afford to turn down his help right now.

"It's still in my backpack," she said reluctantly. "From when I was at your place. Over by the front door."

Matt stood and made his way over to the door, where he found her backpack immediately. He grabbed a chair from her dining room table on his way back over, positioning it in front of her so that when he sat, his knees almost brushed the couch on either side of her legs. He balanced the small first-aid kit on his knee, removing his gloves and tossing them on the coffee table before as he unzipped the bag.

"This is all you have?" he asked with a frown as he ran his hand over the contents of the bag, which consisted of just the basics: a few bandages, some gauze, rubbing alcohol, a thermometer.

"Well…yeah. It's meant for paper cuts, not crime fighting," she said defensively.

Matt just scowled briefly in disapproval as he put some alcohol on the gauze. When he was done, he set the bottle and gauze aside and paused.

"Can I see your hands?" he asked.

She hesitated, still apprehensive of the entire situation. It made no sense for him to be helping her right now, and that put her on edge. As usual, it was almost like Matt could read her mind.

"I know you've had a bad night. And you're scared. But I'm not going to hurt you, Sarah," he said softly, holding his hand out palm up in front of him. "Please, just…let me see your hands."

Sarah watched him carefully for another moment, before slowly holding her injured hands out. He was surprisingly gentle as he took her left hand and slowly began unwrapping the hastily done bandages.

"Why are you…doing this?" she asked uncertainly as he set the bloody dressing aside.

"Because it would be difficult to clean your cuts with the bandages still on."

Sarah rolled her eyes at his avoidance of the question. "You know that's not what I meant."

Matt didn't answer her for a few moments. She wondered if maybe he didn't know why he was helping her any more than she did.

"I think we've already established that neither of us is going to understand the other's actions," he said finally. "So how about you just…let me help you, regardless of why?"

Yet again, she wasn't sure how to interpret that, and she tilted her head in puzzlement. But she was distracted from his evasive comment when he turned her left wrist slightly as he dabbed the alcohol-soaked gauze against her skin. The movement triggered a sharp pain in the swollen area, and Sarah sucked a breath in between her teeth as she tried not to jerk her hand away. "Oh—ow, ow."

Matt's eyebrows went up at her reaction, and he stilled his hands.

"Sorry," he said, then frowned and tilted his head, concentrating. "I didn't notice your wrist was sprained." He moved his hand down to her wrist and lightly pressed his fingers there. "It's not too bad. The ligament's not torn, just strained. Do you own an ice pack?"

"Not anymore." Sarah shook her head. "I lent it to Mrs. Benedict when she hurt her ankle a few months back from trying to take a…Zumba class, or something. I think she still has it."

"Okay. What do you have in your freezer?"

She tried to remember if she had anything in there other than ice trays. "Um…I don't know. Probably not a lot. Some vegetables, maybe. You can't tell from here?"

Matt shook his head as he started to stand. "Everything's the same temperature in there. Makes it harder. I'll go see if you have something we can use."

While Matt was busy searching in her freezer for a suitable ice pack replacement, Sarah glanced over at the contents of her purse that were still littering the floor near the front door. Her eyes landed on her cell phone and her mind jumped back to Lauren's voicemail. A strangely hollow feeling came over her, and she slowly leaned forward, resting her forehead on her knees and pushing her hair back with her bandaged hands.

Matt came back into the living room, and she heard him pause when he entered, possibly because of her curled up position, although she didn't know how he could tell. She didn't care enough to sit back up yet. Mostly she was just focused on not crying again, considering her company. After a few seconds, Matt sat down in the chair across from her again, waiting wordlessly. When she opened her eyes she was looking down at his black combat boots.

"Did you find anything?" she asked as she slowly sat back up and pushed her hair out of her face.

Matt held up a small bag of frozen mixed vegetables. He took her left wrist and slowly pressed the bag to it. She inhaled at the cold sensation against her skin.

"I'm sorry this happened to you," he said softly, wrapping a long elastic bandage around it to keep it in place. "It wasn't…wasn't supposed to. You're not supposed to be the one going around fighting people. That's my end of the deal."

"I don't know if this really counted as fighting someone," she admitted. "It might have been a little too one-sided to be called that."

Matt paused and raised his eyebrows, then carefully flipped her hands over to display the bloody split skin on her knuckles. "I think this says otherwise. Maybe you got in a few more good hits than you think."

Sarah looked down at the broken skin, feeling oddly lifted by the idea.

"You think so?" she asked.

He gave a small, crooked grin. "Seems like a safe bet. Your right hook isn't too bad, actually."

She winced guiltily at the comment, even though it hadn't been a reprimand, and tried not to look at the cut she'd left on his lip. "I didn't, um…I didn't mean what I said earlier. About you being the same as Ronan."

The small grin slid off his face, replaced by the carefully expressionless look that she had seen him wear so often.

"It's fine," he said, pressing gauze to the largest of the cuts on her palm. "You…weren't wrong. About some of the things I've done."

"I know. But…I hit you both in the face today, because I'm an idiot," she said, exhaling in a short, bitter laugh. "And…out of two guys who could both beat the daylights out of me pretty easily, one of them did, and the other is…helping me, for some reason." She shrugged. "I can see the difference."

Matt didn't answer, and she still couldn't read the look on his face; if anything, he looked vaguely conflicted as he finished wrapping her left hand and moved on to her right one.

"You ever hit anyone before today?" he asked, clearly diverting the subject away from himself and Ronan.

Sarah thought about it for a moment. "Um…in seventh grade, I slapped a high school boy for telling my friend that her haircut made her look like James Spader."

He raised his eyebrows in what might have been amusement, and a ghost of the crooked grin returned to his mouth. "So this is a lifelong habit, then? Hitting people bigger than you."

Sarah exhaled a short laugh and shook her head. "Yeah. I guess so. Not, um…not sure how that's working out for me."

"Well, you're not dead, so…I guess it's working out alright," he replied. The alcohol on the gauze stung against the cuts on her hands as he worked, and she frowned down at them.

Matt finished wrapping her right hand and set the bandages aside. He reached for a bottle of water and a dishtowel that were sitting on the coffee table. She assumed he must have brought them back out of the kitchen with him.

"Your hands are all done," he told her. "I'm going to get the cuts on your face now, okay? It won't take long."

She nodded, looking down at the new bandages on her hands and letting her mind drift while Matt began gently cleaning the blood away from her face. Each time he lifted the dishtowel from her face, she was surprised to see how much blood was on it. Was her face really bleeding that much? No wonder the taxi driver freaked out. _I should've given him a bigger tip._

Sarah was lost in her thoughts, so when Matt paused suddenly it took her a moment to notice. She looked back up to see that his blank eyes were directed somewhere near the bottom of her face, and his brow was furrowed in concentration, then suspicion.

"What happened to your lip?" he asked sharply. The light tone from a few minutes ago was gone.

Between all of her other injuries, Sarah had almost forgotten about her bruised, swollen lips, and the split where Ronan had backhanded her. She felt an anxious flutter in her stomach as she realized they were approaching the topic she had been avoiding with Matt for a while now.

"What do you mean?" she asked nervously with a small shrug. "It's—I…got hit."

"You have blood in your mouth that isn't yours."

Sarah grimaced at the thought. She had rinsed her mouth out multiple times to get the taste of blood out, but apparently there was still enough of a trace for Matt to pick up on. She took a deep, shaky breath and looked down at her hands in her lap.

"It's really creepy that you can tell that, you know," she said evasively.

"You aren't answering my question," he said calmly, but there was an edge to his tone.

Sarah looked away. "Does it really matter?"

Matt slowly reached up a hand to touch the ripped sleeve of her shirt, and as his face darkened she could tell he was putting the pieces together.

"I'm thinking it might."

"It's not…I mean…he didn't manage to do anything," she said weakly. "Not really. I'm fine."

She saw a familiar twitch in Matt's jaw. "But he was trying to do something?"

"I…what do you want me to say, Matt?" she said tiredly, really not wanting to discuss this particular topic with him, of all people. "Ronan's always been weirdly…fixated on me. And then recently I just—I made it a lot worse. It's not surprising that it went the way it did tonight. Guys like Ronan…violence and sex are all the same thing to them."

Even if Sarah wasn't uncomfortably familiar with the signs of anger that always seemed so tightly coiled just beneath the surface, without his mask she could clearly see it in Matt's eyes. But behind that, she was surprised to see that he looked almost uncertain, as well. It was an expression Sarah wasn't used to seeing on his face.

"Do you—" Matt began, then stopped and rubbed his hand over his mouth angrily. When spoke again, he sounded oddly unsure. "Do you want me to call Claire, instead?"

She gave him a confused look, not sure why he'd need to call Claire. "The nurse? The cuts aren't that bad, are they?"

"No, I just mean…" he trailed off, apparently choosing his words carefully. "If you'd be more comfortable with her doing this. She's back in town. I can call her."

Sarah looked down as she realized what he was getting at.

"Oh. Um, I don't…I don't really know Claire," she said.

He shrugged. "Neither did I, the first time she fixed me up."

Sarah was sure Claire was probably a very nice person, and she appreciated the surprising consideration behind his offer, but the idea of bringing a total stranger to her apartment to deal with her injuries sounded horribly unappealing. She shook her head.

"No. I don't want to bring anyone else in."

"You're sure?"

"Yeah," she said, and she was surprised to find that she meant it. "This is…this is okay."

"Alright," he said after a pause, and slowly began to wet another corner of the dishtowel.

"This…fixation," he began tightly, and she frowned when she realized he wasn't done with the topic. "It's been going on for a while?"

"Kind of," Sarah said. "I mean, not…not like this. He'd always made a lot of creepy comments, but never actually followed through on them. All bark, you know? But then tonight was, um…tonight was the bite, I guess."

"You never mentioned it."

"During all of our heart-to-hearts in alleyways, you mean?" she asked pointedly. Matt winced slightly, and Sarah sighed as she eased away from the defensive a bit. "I just—I didn't think it was really relevant. And it never seemed like he'd actually do anything until recently."

"What changed?" Matt asked carefully. Sarah hesitated before answering, and he cocked his head to the side.

"I, um…I told them I was sleeping with Yates," Sarah admitted. He looked surprised by her confession, and she looked down uncomfortably before continuing. "Ronan kind of assumed it, actually. When I was upset the day Yates was murdered. And I just…went along with it. To explain why I took the papers. And it worked. Jason bought it. But it's like it triggered some extra creepy switch in Ronan's head."

She had expected another lecture on how she needed to be more careful, but Matt just pressed his lips together, clenching his jaw. His stormy expression was oddly incongruent with his mild touch as he pressed a bandage over the cut on her cheek, smoothing it out with his thumb.

He was about to move his hand away from her face when he paused, then slowly tilted her chin up with his finger, exposing the bruises that marred her neck. She knew he couldn't see them, but somehow he knew exactly where they were anyway. Lightly, he ran a thumb over the bruised area on her neck, frowning. Sarah shivered at the touch, but she didn't move away.

"I hope you got in more than just a couple of good hits," he said darkly when he finally dropped his hand away from her throat.

"I, um…I hit him pretty good with a stapler," she said with a frown. "And I think maybe I broke his nose, too."

"Good. He deserved it."

"Yeah," she agreed half-heartedly, looking down. "I guess so."

Matt picked up on her unenthusiastic tone. "You can't possibly be feeling guilty over hitting him back," he said doubtfully.

"No, that's not it," she said. And it was true. It wasn't the act of hitting Ronan that was making her feel uneasy; it was whatever feeling had flashed through her she had done it. "When I hit him with the stapler…I mean, it was really gross and bloody and freaked me out, obviously, but it was also kind of, um…" she trailed off, not sure how to describe it.

"Satisfying," Matt finished for her quietly.

Sarah frowned. Satisfying was exactly the word to describe it. And that seemed wrong.

"Yeah. A little bit. Does that make me like a…psychopath or something?"

"I might not be the best person to answer that question," he with a dark laugh. "But I get it. The satisfaction."

"I don't really know if that should make me feel better or worse," she admitted, and Matt smirked.

"I don't know either," he said. He nodded to her spot on the couch. "We should switch places. So I can get the cut on your back."

Sarah hesitated before slowly standing. This was the part she really hadn't been looking forward to. She waited until Matt was sitting on the couch before she lowered herself onto the wooden chair he had just been occupying, straddling the back of the chair so that she was facing away from him. She glanced over her shoulder nervously, not quite liking that she couldn't see what he was going to do.

"You'll need to lift up the back of your shirt," he said quietly.

Haltingly, she pulled the back of her shirt up so that the lower half of her back was bare, revealing the long cut along the lower left side, a few inches above her waistband. She winced as she felt the fabric peel away from the bloody area around the cut. She felt horribly exposed, and hoped that Matt would work quickly.

"I, uh…I'm going to try to gauge how bad it is, okay?"

Sarah nodded, still craning her neck to watch what he was doing.

"You have to turn around. The skin on your back twists when you're looking behind you like that."

Reluctantly, she faced forward again. She wished there was a way to stop her heart from racing nervously, because she knew he could hear it clear as day in the quiet apartment.

She jumped the first time she felt his hand press against the small of her back.

"Calm down," he said softly, keeping his hand in place. "I'm not going to hurt you."

Sarah breathed in shakily and tried not to look at the black mask and gloves lying on the coffee table; a visible reminder of exactly who the man sitting behind her was. Letting him fix up her hands and face had made her feel vulnerable enough, but at least then she had been able to see what he was doing.

She felt Matt press his fingers against the skin around the cut, pausing each time before moving to a different area. "This isn't that bad. It's long, but not deep. You won't need stitches. It's not infected."

"How can you tell it isn't infected?" she asked, then immediately shook her head. "No. Nevermind. If it has to do with smell or taste, don't tell me."

Matt chuckled lowly. "It's nothing like that. If the cut was infected, the tissue around it would be a little warmer. Nothing you'd be able to feel at this point, but the temperature would increase the longer it went untreated. But it's the same temperature as the rest of your skin."

Sarah was slightly relieved that it wasn't anything more invasive than that. She could hear Matt rummaging around in the first aid kit for something, and she glanced over her shoulder curiously. He was holding a cloth up to the bottle of disinfecting alcohol, letting it soak in. She turned back around as he turned the bottle back upright.

"This is about to sting," he warned her.

Sarah nodded and held her breath as she waited for the cold smart of alcohol against the cut. When it arrived, she inhaled sharply through her teeth and instinctively arched her back away from the sting. Matt put a hand on her side to keep her still as he pressed the alcohol soaked cloth against her back. His touch felt hot against her bare skin.

"Sorry," he said quietly. After a few seconds, he took his hand off her waist and then slowly removed the cloth from the cut. "That should be good. What is this from, anyway?"

"Filing cabinet," she answered, scowling. "The corner of one of the drawers got me when Ronan threw me into it."

The memory of the cold metal biting into her back made her shudder, and she squeezed her eyes closed and rested her forehead on the back of the chair. The movement attracted Matt's attention.

"You alright?"

"Yeah. I'm just tired. Jason gave me tomorrow off, which is…weird. I'll probably sleep the whole time."

Her answer seemed to concern him. "Did you hit your head at all during all this?"

"No. I really am just tired. I don't have a concussion," she assured him.

"Are you sure? What are the names of the continents?"

Sarah glanced back over her shoulder suspiciously, certain he was making fun of her. Sure enough, he had a good-humored smile on his face that she had never seen on him before.

Sarah let out a short, surprised laugh and turned back around. "Alright. I get it. Not the best way to test a concussion. I'm sorry; I'll Google something better for next time."

"Good. I look forward to answering whatever questions WebMD tells you to ask me," Matt said, smoothing the adhesive edges of the bandage against her skin. She winced as the pressure pulled at the edges of the wound.

"Alright. You're all done," he said quietly.

Sarah let go of the back of her shirt, letting it settle back down over her lower back. She shifted in the chair, swinging her legs around until she was facing him again.

"Thanks," she said softly.

"Just returning the favor," he replied.

Sarah nodded distractedly. The subject of favors had reminded her that there was a question that had been lingering in her mind all night, which she hadn't yet worked up the courage to ask him. She studied his face, chewing the uninjured side of her bottom lip nervously. She wasn't sure how he would react, but she didn't have many other choices.

"So, um…I know that I just…hit you in the face and said a bunch of mean things to you, so maybe this isn't the best time to ask for a favor," Sarah began hesitantly, nervously pulling on one of the loose strings on her bandages as she avoided looking at him. "But, um, does…does the offer to keep an eye on my dad's place still stand?" she asked quietly.

Matt didn't answer right away, and she was sure he was going to say no. Obviously he'd say no. It was one thing for him to help her with her injuries, considering she had done the same for him. It was another thing entirely to ask him to help her protect her family, no more than an hour after she'd basically told him he was an awful person—even if she had taken it back later—and cut his lip open with her house keys. She shook her head, embarrassed, and opened her mouth to retract the question. Before she could, he spoke first.

"I'll go when I leave here tonight."

Sarah blinked at him. "Really?"

"Yeah. Hell's Kitchen is quiet tonight. And I remember the way."

Maybe it was the headache and the stress from the day, or maybe she had been more worried about her father than she had realized, but her sudden relief at his answer hit her so strongly and so unexpectedly that she had to close her eyes for a few seconds when she felt more pinpricks of tears threatening to build up.

"Thanks," she whispered.

"I owed you one," Matt said with a small, dismissive shrug. Sarah shook her head.

"No, I mean it, Matt," she insisted, impulsively reaching out her hand to touch his arm, causing his eyebrows to quirk up in surprise. "My dad means everything to me, and I can't…I can't protect him on my own. So…thank you. Seriously."

He seemed thrown by her gratitude.

"You're welcome," he said finally. After a tense pause, he stood suddenly, businesslike again. "Try to get some rest tomorrow. Don't think about work."

"Yeah, that…that sounds good," she said as she watched him collect his mask and gloves. For some reason, despite how much she'd wanted to be alone when she'd first gotten home, the idea of him leaving and her being alone in her apartment made her slightly nervous now.

"You, um…you think Ronan's thinking up ways to murder me right now?" Sarah joked weakly, trying to distract herself from the sinking feeling in her stomach. But as she said the joke she realized that it was probably true, and the thought just made her feel worse.

"I don't know. Probably," Matt said, and she rolled her eyes at his less than reassuring reply. "I'll ask him tonight."

It took Sarah a second to catch on to what he'd just said. "What?"

"Building on the corner of 11th and 53rd, right? Apartment 203," he recited.

"Um…that sounds right. I don't have it memorized," she said slowly. "What…what are you going to do?"

"Have a chat," he said casually, pulling his gloves back on. "I think we'll have a lot to talk about."

Sarah raised her eyebrows at that description of what she was sure was not actually going to be a friendly chat.

"Be careful, Matt," she warned.

"From what I remember of Ronan, I think I can handle him," Matt said dryly. "He did run away the last time we met."

"Yeah, I know you can handle Ronan. But…you're still injured," she argued. "Even more so after last night. And he owns a lot of guns. And knives, and—and who knows what else. What if he's hoping that you show up?"

"Well, I'm a people pleaser," Matt said with a shrug, pulling his mask on and drawing it back down over his eyes.

"You don't have to go over there just because of…all this," she said hesitantly. "With me and him."

"I didn't say it had anything to do with you," he replied offhandedly, but the twitch in his jaw contradicted his nonchalant tone. "He's just overdue for a visit."

"Right," Sarah said, casting him a doubtful look. "If you say so."

"I'll still go to your dad's place first. Make sure there's nothing suspicious going on. I'll call you when I'm done there, before I go to Ronan's. Let you know if I find anything."

Sarah fidgeted with the new bandages on her hands as she debated something.

"Actually, unless you find something urgent at my dad's…why don't you wait to call me until after you go to Ronan's," she said tentatively. "Just to make sure he didn't, like…hit you with a bunch of tranquilizer darts or something. I don't know."

Matt's face was back to being halfway obscured by the black mask, so she couldn't properly see the expression on his face as he cocked his head to the side.

"Alright," he agreed slowly. "Might be kind of late. I don't know how long our conversation will take."

Had it been anyone but Ronan, she would have winced sympathetically at the implication.

"That's okay," she said with a shrug. "I'll don't know how much I'll sleep tonight anyway."

He frowned, and she knew some of the nervousness she was feeling had slipped into her voice.

"I'll have my phone on me," he said simply. Obviously she knew that, given that he was going to call her later. But she knew what he was implying, and she appreciated it.

"I know," she told him. "I'll be fine. Thanks, Matt."

He considered her for another moment, then nodded slowly and made his way over to the window. After slipping through the opening, he leaned back in for a moment.

"Lock this," he ordered, gesturing to the window, and she sighed. "Now."

"Okay, okay," she mumbled, not bothering to argue as she slowly got up and made her way over to the window. She slid the window shut, locking the latch on top firmly into place. She saw Matt's shadowy outline on the other side of the glass give a nod.

"I think you've gotten bossier," she told him through the windowpane.

The vigilante just gave her another smirk, and then disappeared into the shadows.


	12. Complications

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! I am so so so sorry. It's been so long. I had a good chunk of the chapter written, and then I got sick. Like, really sick. And then it turned into pneumonia, which then turned into an even nastier lung infection on TOP of pneumonia, and basically I've been in and out of the hospital for the past couple of weeks and I just now get to be home.
> 
> To be honest, the next chapter might take a little while to get up (hopefully not THIS long though) because I am still pretty sick and that definitely slows the writing process. But please don't think I've abandoned it just because it hasn't been updated on time! I usually try to post progress updates on my profile, so you can always go look there to see what's up.
> 
> Anyway, last chapter was really intense, so this one is a bit lighter, and a lot more character-driven than plot-driven, because that's easier to write and I'm sick so I can do whatever I want. Meaning this chapter is basically various people sitting around talking to each other in different settings, but next chapter we'll jump back into some more plot. On that same note, I didn't get a chance to send this to my beta/proofread it as closely as usual, so forgive me until I have a chance to clean it up a bit more.
> 
> One last thing! The lovely BrittWitt16 on FFN made some awesome fan art for this story, which you can find on her tumblr here:
> 
> thetenthdoctorscompanion.tumblr.com/post/125877750243/what-they-wouldnt-do-a-daredevil-fanfiction-by
> 
> A few others have asked if they can make fan art too, and the answer is yes, please, of course! If you send me the link I will put it on my profile. Speaking of tumblr, a few of you have suggested I start one for this fic, for updates and fun posts and whatnot. Which is great! Except I actually have no idea how to use tumblr. Maybe if someone else wanted to start one for me...? Remember that I am a poor sickly girl and you should feel bad for me.
> 
> I think that's all the updates. On to Matt and Sarah (you guys still remember who they are, right?)

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The wait between Matt's exit and his phone call was long and tense. Sarah found herself constantly trying to calculate how much time it would take him to get to her dads and check out what was happening, then to get to Ronan's and do whatever he was going to do there. Had it been long enough? Had something gone wrong at her dad's? Or did it seem like more time had passed than it really had?

When the phone did finally ring, she answered immediately.

"Hey. What's going on?" she asked, her voice slightly raspy from exhaustion.

She knew immediately that the news wasn't good when Matt responded with an agitated sigh before answering. "Ronan's not here."

Sarah didn't respond for a minute, trying to understand what he meant.

"As in, he's not home yet?" she asked slowly.

"No. As in, he packed some of his stuff up quick and split. Recently, too. I don't know if he's trying to avoid me, or Orion, or the police…but I don't think he's planning on coming back to his apartment any time soon. He might have left town."

"He didn't," she responded immediately. That much she knew for sure.

"How do you know?"

"Because he's obsessive. He's obsessed with me and he's obsessed with you, and…we're both right here in Hell's Kitchen. So that's where he'll be, too."

Matt was quiet on the other end of the line, which she took as acknowledgement that she was right, and that Ronan was still in the city somewhere.

"I'll keep looking," he said. "I know this city, I know its hiding places."

"Yeah," she responded, trying to sound convinced. "Okay. That's…that's good."

"Sarah, listen—"

"Did you get a chance to stop by my dad's place?" she interrupted him nervously. "Is he okay?"

"Yeah, I did. He's fine. All of his doors and windows are locked. I didn't pick up on any signs that anyone has been lingering around for extended periods of time, so I don't think he's being watched."

Sarah was relieved to hear that no one was stationed outside her father's home, but the news also shook her conviction that something was off about the men who had visited him. "So…what, I'm just being crazy and paranoid?"

"Not necessarily," Matt replied. "Just because he's not being watched right now doesn't mean that something's not up. I'll keep checking. When are you going to see him next?"

"I was supposed to go tomorrow, but I don't know if—I mean, I just—I don't really want him to see me…like this. But I'll go soon. I'll try to ask him if anything's been weird."

"Good. Let me know what he says."

"Yeah," she said tiredly. Her brain was so tired from the day that she felt like it was just shutting down, completely incapable of absorbing any more information today. "I think I'm going to try and—and get some sleep now."

"Alright. You should be fine tonight. He's not going to do anything right now, not when everything is still so up in the air. Is your deadlock on?"

Sarah almost laughed at his segue from _You're completely safe_ to _Barricade yourself in your apartment._

"Yeah. It's on."

"Okay. Call me if you need me," he told her.

"I will," she said distractedly, already noticing the twisting sensation of anxiety building up in her chest.

"Sarah," he said sternly, snapping her attention back to the conversation. "I mean it. If you think that something is wrong…call me. I'll come."

She rubbed her eyes with the palm of her free hand, trying not to think too much about his confusing statement. Was he just being helpful because he felt guilty about what had happened to her? Or was he just eager to find Ronan and smack down the guy who had been a longstanding obstacle to his goals?

"I—yeah. No, I will. Thanks, Matt."

After they hung up, Sarah began getting ready for bed. She was too tired to change clothes or brush her teeth. Instead, she dug her stun gun out of her drawer and set it on top of the nightstand, then paused as her gaze fell on her purse, which she had hung on the back of her door after hastily stuffing the contents back inside. She slowly walked over and withdrew the tranquilizer gun she'd pocketed earlier, then returned to her nightstand and carefully placed it next to the stun gun. Satisfied that this was a more than sufficient arsenal for what would no doubt be an uneventful night, she climbed into bed and turned off the light.

She lay there for a few minutes, listening tensely to the sounds of the city outside her apartment and imagining even more sound inside her apartment. She cursed at her mind for being so awake when her body was so ready to go to sleep. Eventually, she grabbed her laptop and put on some quiet music to fill the silence—classical pieces that she knew every piece of from having practiced them on piano—and hoped that she would fall asleep soon.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

But it wasn't until the sun had come up that she actually fell asleep, calmed by the dim light coming through her window. She slept restlessly for a few hours before waking up shortly after noon, disoriented by the time. Unable to fall back asleep, she gathered all of her blankets and pillows and piled them onto the couch, where she buried herself among the comforting softness with a glass of wine. Looking for something to fill the silence in the apartment, she flipped on the television and zoned out.

After several episodes of a cheesy daytime soap opera that was currently playing on marathon, Sarah set her wine glass down on the side table, letting her gaze linger on the cell phone sitting next to it, where Lauren's voicemail was still stored. Sarah slowly spun the phone around on the side table with her finger, chewing her lip. She could call Lauren, but her friend would definitely want to talk in person, and what would Sarah tell her? That she got mugged? Lauren could almost always tell when she was lying; she'd pick up on it immediately. There was already enough tension between them because Sarah wouldn't tell her anything about her new career or new life. If she saw Sarah looking like she did right now, with no believable explanation, she'd flip out.

Focused on this dilemma, Sarah jumped when she heard a knock at her front door. She threw a nervous glance at the door. There were only a handful of people that could be on the other side, and a good number of them were not people who'd be there for anything good. She slowly got up from the couch and tip toed over to the entrance, where she squinted through the peep hole.

Of all the people she had expected to see on the other side, Foggy Nelson was not one of them. And yet, that was unmistakably his shaggy blonde hair.

"Foggy?" she asked confusedly through the door.

"That's me," he replied, his voice muffled slightly by the barrier.

"What are you doing here?"

Through the peephole, she could see Foggy glance around the hallway.

"You know, this door is doing an excellent job of acting as a barrier between the inside and outside of your apartment, as I'm sure it's meant to do," he informed her. "But, little known fact: doors can also open, so that you can interact with other humans face to face."

Sarah frowned down at her pajamas; the old t-shirt and sweatpants she was wearing were comfortable, but not the most appropriate attire for company. And the shirt didn't do much to hide the bruises littering her neck and arms. She sighed and leaned against the door for a second. She really didn't want to talk to anyone right now, but she also didn't want to turn away someone who had been nothing but nice to her the one time they'd met.

"Um…yeah, just—just hang on a second," she called through the door, backtracking over to the armchair and grabbing a random sweatshirt from the pile of clothing she had yet to do anything with. She zipped it up over the t-shirt, wincing as she slowly she tried not to move her wrist too much. Returning to the door, she undid the deadbolt and slowly opened it.

"Hey—whoa," Foggy's cheerful grin faltered when he got a look at her. "You really do look bad."

Sarah shifted uncomfortably, painfully aware of her busted lip, the vivid bruise covering most of her cheek bone, and the ugly finger marks that were still visible above the neckline of her shirt. She found herself grateful that the oversized sweatshirt covered not only her bruised arms but her wrists and bandaged hands as well. Next to Foggy, who was wearing a sharp suit and carrying a briefcase, she was sure she looked especially run down.

"Looks worse than it is," she said with a forced smile. Foggy looked doubtful, but she changed the subject before he could object. "What are you doing here? Is Matt stuck under a collapsed bridge or something?"

"No, no. At least, I don't think so. You never know with him. I was just, uh, in the neighborhood," he said, gesturing down the hall. "Or, more specifically, in your hallway. Working on a couple of statements with Mrs. Benedict."

Sarah nodded slowly, leaning against the door and wrapping her sweatshirt tighter around her as she waited for the rest of his explanation.

"So…I…thought I'd stop by," Foggy said evasively, scratching the back of his head. "Catch up on life. You know."

"Catch up on life," she repeated doubtfully.

"Communication is important for a budding friendship, Sarah."

She tilted her head and fixed him with a skeptical look, but he just continued smiling innocently at her. She sighed and shook her head.

"Do you want to come in, Foggy?"

"Yes, please. If I don't come in, I'm pretty sure Mrs. Benedict is going to lure me back into her apartment. I'm not as good at escaping from her conversational black holes as Matt is," Foggy said as Sarah stepped aside to let him through the door.

"Where is Matt, anyway? It's kind of…daylight-y for him to fighting bad guys, isn't it?"

"He had to go take statements from another client on the other side of town, because get this: we have _multiple_ clients nowadays," Foggy said excitedly. Sarah must not have looked suitably impressed, because he continued earnestly, "As in plural, Sarah. More than one. I never thought Foggy Nelson would live to see the day."

Sarah laughed tiredly at his unreserved excitement; she hadn't realized that Nelson and Murdock wasn't that successful of a law firm. She supposed it made sense, what with the Murdock half spending all of his time playing vigilante, and the Nelson half spending his time keeping said vigilante alive.

"Do you want something to drink?" she asked, grabbing her empty wine glass and making her way over to the kitchen.

"What do you have?"

"Well, I have, um…" She opened the fridge, and her eyes fell on the mostly empty shelves. She snapped the door shut. "Tap water. But, the pipes are kind of funny so it sort of tastes like pennies. Or, uh…very cheap wine. Sorry. I thought maybe I had other stuff."

"How cheap are we talking? Under ten dollars?"

Sarah held up the wine bottle with a wry grin. "Try under four dollars."

Foggy grinned back, tilting his head as he considered the offer. But he sighed as he glanced at the clock on her wall. "I think I have to pass on that this time. I have more work to do when I get back to the office."

"Suit yourself," Sarah said with a small shrug as she poured a good amount of wine into her glass, causing Foggy to raise his eyebrows.

"Bit of a heavy hand, there," he noted lightly.

"I've had a bad week," Sarah replied quietly.

Foggy gave her a vaguely worried look. "Are you allowed to drink alcohol when you're injured? Doesn't it, I don't know…keep your insides from knitting together, or something?"

"I have no idea, Dr. Foggy." Sarah closed her eyes as she took a deep drink from her glass. It tasted exactly like one would expect three dollar wine to taste, but she didn't care. "And anyway, my insides are fine. I don't have, like, internal bleeding or anything. It's the outside that could use a new paint job."

She swirled the wine around in her glass absently, staring down into the dark liquid.

"Well, did you win, at least?" Foggy asked.

"Sorry?" Sarah said, glancing up from the glass she had been idly staring into.

"You know," he said, holding his fists up in a mock punching motion. "I should see the other guy, or whatever?"

Sarah laughed sharply, surprised at how bitter it sounded. "No. _Lord_ no, I didn't win. Not even close."

Foggy grimaced sympathetically. "Well…I heard you stapled his face, at least."

Sarah winced at the memory, but nodded.

"That is truly terrifying. Congratulations."

"What, um…what all did Matt tell you? About what happened?" Sarah asked, keeping her voice carefully casual as she carried her wine glass back over to the couch, where she curled back up into one of the many blankets.

Foggy followed her into the living room, settling onto the arm of the couch at the opposite end of the couch.

"Not much. Just that someone you work with hurt you pretty badly. He didn't go into detail, or anything," Foggy reassured her. Sarah nodded, trying to hide her relief that Matt hadn't talked about what Ronan had been trying to do. "He definitely didn't tell me how bad you looked. I mean, I guess he wouldn't really know how bad you look."

"Oh, I'm sure he does," she said, taking a drink of her wine before continuing. "And anyway, it's not really that bad. It's all just little stuff. Cuts and bruises. I'm not bleeding to death on a couch from scaffolding falling on me, or anything like that, so…I'm not sure I get to complain."

"Okay, well, don't compare yourself to Matt," Foggy argued. "You got attacked. Matt puts on a Halloween costume and goes out looking for fights. That's different."

"We both made our choices," she said softly with a shrug before taking another long drink of her wine. "They generally seem to end in violence, apparently."

"Speaking of violence, Matt _did_ mention that his split lip was from you clocking him with your keys after you yelled at him for a bit."

Sarah glanced up guiltily to see Foggy giving her a disapproving look.

"Am I the only one around here who doesn't solve all of their problems with violence?" he asked in exasperation.

"I'm sorry. I told him I was sorry. He was fine."

"Did it occur to you that maybe you shouldn't hit someone who's—"

"Bigger than me?" Sarah suggested. "Also stronger? And doesn't like me? Yeah, I kind of thought of that _after_ I hit him."

"I was actually going to say already injured. And also, trying to help you?" Foggy said pointedly. Sarah looked down guiltily. "Oh, and— _blind_! You can't hit blind people!"

"People hit Matt all the time! He's a vigilante!" Sarah protested.

"That's no excuse," Foggy said, pointing a finger at her sternly.

Sarah held her hands up in defeat, not wanting Foggy to continue lecturing her.

There was a long minute of silence during which Foggy glanced idly around her apartment and Sarah fiddled with her now empty wine glass.

"What are you watching?" Foggy asked finally, casting a doubtful look at the television. Sarah, glad to seize upon a change of subject, glanced at the screen to see that the two main leads were currently having a tearful fight in front of a highly unconvincing painted beach background.

"Oh, um, it's this Spanish soap opera. I think it's called, um… _Piratas…Piratas Delgado—Llorando_?" she fumbled, trying to remember the title of the show.

"Wait, I've seen this show," Foggy said, nodding in recognition. "My friend Karen watches it. It's completely insane."

"Right? I'd never seen it before today, but they were having a marathon. It's great."

"Not the word I'd use, but alright. Do you speak Spanish?"

"Not especially." Sarah shook her head. "So I don't really know what's going on a lot of the time? But the plotlines are ridiculous, so I kind of think that even if I was fluent, I wouldn't understand."

"I don't speak much Spanish either, but Karen explains it pretty well. She's…maybe talked me into watching it more than once."

"Wait, so do you know who the father of Esmeralda's baby is?" Sarah asked, gesturing towards the television, where a very obviously pregnant woman was running in a floor length gown. "Because I can't figure out if it's supposed to be Ronaldo or Eduardo."

Foggy shook his head. "Neither. Get this: It's not a baby at all. It's a tumor."

"What? No!"

"It's true!" he insisted. "That's why they need her godfather's surgeon skills so badly."

"But he's dead," Sarah argued. "He got impaled on a swordfish when that giant tornado hit the beach on the day he was supposed to marry Paulo."

"Yeah, but they saved his hands on ice, remember? So now, they're trying to graft them onto Esmeralda's twin sister—"

"—because she has hooks for hands!" Sarah finished excitedly. "Oh, my god, this makes so much more sense now. So, obviously his surgeon skills will transfer over to her once she has his hands."

"Oh, obviously."

"God, this show is good," Sarah said as she leaned back against the pillows piled behind her. "So…your friend Karen managed to convince you to watch a whole season of this?" Sarah asked leadingly.

Foggy grinned sheepishly and shrugged. "I don't know. I like spending time with her. And I like hearing her try to translate Spanish. It's cute. If it has to happen while watching a cheesy soap opera…I can handle that."

Sarah shifted slightly to get more comfortable, and a sharp pain shot through her lower back. She jerked slightly and hissed through her teeth.

"Ow! Sweet mother of— _dicks_ ," she gasped under her breath.

Foggy held a hand out in concern. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm—I'm fine. I'm just…" Sarah reached a hand behind her to feel the bandage on her back, and was surprised when her hand came away with blood on it. She hastily wiped it on the leg of her sweatpants—which were luckily dark enough to hide the stain—before Foggy could see. "…a little sore."

He clearly looked unconvinced, but she didn't feel like discussing the depth of her injuries with him, so she stubbornly held his gaze until he sighed and looked back at the television, though it was clear he wasn't really watching it.

"I take it whoever did this is still out there," he said after a pause. "Matt said he was going to look for him when he goes out tonight."

Sarah felt her stomach tighten slightly at the reminder of the constantly lurking threat that Ronan now presented. She pursed her lips and nodded.

"You worried about it?" Foggy asked quietly, looking at her sympathetically.

"I'm not drinking wine before two on a weekday because I feel great about it."

"Well, don't be," he said resolutely. "I don't necessarily condone what Matt does on his nights off. Circumventing the law and all. But…he is good at it. And if he's looking for this guy, he'll find him. You don't have anything to worry about."

She looked at him intently for a long moment, searching for signs that he was just saying that to make her feel better. But he looked genuinely earnest in his belief that Matt would be able to track Ronan down. Sarah was less certain.

"You have a lot of faith in him," she noted finally.

"He's earned it," Foggy said simply. "Well, then he kind of lost it again for a while when he decided to become a superhero. But now he's earning it back again."

Sarah thought about that as she pressed her hand against the bandage on her back to stem the slight trickle of blood coming from underneath it.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Foggy said, craning his neck around to try and get a better look at what she was messing with.

"I'm sure," she said quickly. "Don't…don't tell Matt."

"Because he turns into bossy Doctor Matt?"

Sarah laughed. "Yeah, pretty much. That's something he does a lot?"

"Oh, yeah," Foggy said with an eye roll. "I don't know if I'm supposed to share that with you, but it's classic Murdock."

"Interesting. I'll put it in my Matt Murdock notebook I keep for the FBI," she muttered, then looked up at Foggy quickly. "Don't tell him I said that either. It was a joke. But he won't get it."

Foggy just laughed at her concern. "You got it. But I'm serious. Back in law school, I was on a bunch of pain killers after getting my wisdom teeth out, and I tried going out to a bar while pretty heavily sedated. I thought Matt would kill me. And that was before I knew that he could, you know…kill me. I still haven't figured out if I think it's endearing or infuriating. But that's Matt."

"I can handle bossy, I guess," Sarah said, then frowned thoughtfully. "Actually, it's not really that different from how he always is. It's better than pity, anyway."

"Matt's not big on pity. I think it's because people always feel bad for him being blind. So when he's worried about someone, he just gets kind of bossy."

She snorted. "Matt doesn't worry about anything to do with me beyond my ability to keep my mouth shut."

Foggy fixed her with a look she couldn't quite identify, but it almost looked like disappointment. He opened his mouth like he was going to argue, but then shut it again and shook his head.

"If you say so," he said resignedly, getting to feet heavily. "I need to get back and do some paperwork."

Sarah slowly got to her feet, trying not to wince at the movement. Foggy was almost to the door when he stopped and turned around, rummaging through his briefcase until he withdrew a small bag.

"I almost forgot. This is for you."

"What is it?" she asked, reaching out to take the bag from him.

"Dunno. Didn't look," he said as he opened the front door. "Take it easy on the wine, huh? And feel better."

"Thanks, Foggy."

"Sure thing." Foggy turned back to her for a second after stepping out into the hall, grinning. "By the way: nice sweatshirt." And with that he closed the door behind him.

Frowning, Sarah glanced down at the sweatshirt she was wearing and cursed when she realized that in her hurry she had grabbed the one Matt had lent her, which clearly said "Columbia" across the front. Rolling her eyes at the fact that she hadn't noticed the significant difference in size, she carefully locked the lower lock and the deadbolt.

As she returned to her spot on the couch, she opened the bag Foggy had given her curiously, blinking in surprise when she saw what was inside. She bit her lip as she pulled out the two ice packs that lay at the bottom of the back. Maybe it was just the effects of the wine, but she found herself contemplating the ice packs for a long while after she had stored them away in her freezer.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The next morning, Sarah snapped awake around five o'clock—a good two hours earlier than she usually woke up. After laying in bed for a while and failing to fall back asleep, she decided to just get up. She could use the extra time to get ready anyway, partially due to how slowly she was moving, and partially because she was now faced with the unfamiliar challenge of dressing to conceal numerous injuries.

She slipped on a long sleeved sweater, wincing as the action pulled yet again at the throbbing cut on her back. Selecting a scarf from her top drawer, she carefully arranged it until it was covering the bruises on her neck. There wasn't much she could do about how her face looked, though not for lack of trying: she spent a good half an hour experimenting with different concealers and powders, trying to cover the dark bruise on her cheekbone, but it still stood out against her pale skin, and the rest of the cuts and bruises fared similarly. Frustrated, she settled for throwing on the largest pair of sunglasses she owned before exiting the apartment.

When she got to work, she was surprised to see several new security guards at the entrance, and even more surprised when they informed her that due to a new policy, they needed to check her bag before she could enter the building. She suddenly found herself glad that she had taken the tranquilizer gun out of her purse at home.

Purposefully averting her eyes from her former work station—which still looked disheveled from her struggle with Ronan two days previous—she hurried into the elevator, pressing the button for Jason's floor. Her stomach flipped nervously as she approached the door, which was open, and knocked on the frame to get his attention.

"Sarah! Good to see you. Feeling better?" Jason asked cheerfully.

She just stared at him wordlessly for a moment, wondering if he was actually insane and couldn't see bandages and bruises covering most of her visible skin.

"Um…I feel alright, yeah."

"I have a pretty busy day planned out," he continued, apparently unbothered by her unenthusiastic response. "So let's jump right into things: We have no more use for a front desk receptionist."

"What?" Sarah said blankly.

"As I'm sure you saw when you came in, we'll now have a small team of security guards monitoring who comes and goes, along with incoming and outgoing mail. And that was the majority of your job, honestly."

"I…am I fired then?" Sarah didn't know if the possibility felt like a positive or negative one.

"Fired? No, heavens no. You've proven yourself to be quite capable in your role as an assistant, though Ronan was fairly convinced that it would be a bad idea to give you any more responsibility than that. But as for me," Jason said, leaning forward slightly over his desk and clasping his hands together. "I think you're much smarter than you let on, Sarah."

Sarah licked her lips nervously at the possible implication behind his words. "So…if I'm not fired then w-what's happening?"

"I'd like to offer you a promotion. You'd be answering directly to me. And doing a lot of the same work you used to do. But now you'd be more of an…errand runner as well, you could say."

"An errand runner," Sarah repeated warily. If Jason picked up on the suspicion in her voice, he didn't acknowledge it.

"Longer hours, since I might occasionally need you to run errands after business hours. But you'd get a raise. Of course, half if it will still stay with company, as per the contracts you signed, but what can you do?"

"I…" Sarah hesitated. There was no way she could turn the job down, but something about it seemed incredibly off, not to mention vague.

"You…accept, of course. Why wouldn't you?" he asked, grinning widely. The more she looked at him the more she noticed that his unnaturally white teeth made his skin look almost yellowish by comparison.

"Um. Yeah. Yes. I accept. Thank you," she said distractedly, looking down to avoid staring at the unsettlingly cheerful look on his face.

Jason hopped off the desk and walked over to the corner of his office. She heard glass clinking and looked up to see him pouring what looked like highly expensive whiskey into two tumblers. Striding back over to her, he extended one of the glasses for her to take.

"Oh, um—n-no, no thanks, I don't think—"

He pressed the glass into her hand, beaming. "Nonsense. This is a celebration."

Reluctantly forcing a tight smile, Sarah took a drink from the glass. The whiskey was smooth, and under different circumstances she probably would have enjoyed it. However, given her company, she found herself more worried that it was laced with poison. But given how deeply Jason himself was drinking from his own glass, she figured it was probably safe.

"Like I said, I have a lot to do today, so mostly you'll just be transferring a lot of your files over from your old station to your new one, which is on this floor now. We can work out more of the details on Monday."

Sarah nodded silently, her stomach still fluttering nervously as she grasped the whiskey glass tightly. After taking a few sips to be polite, she was relieved when Jason put his own drink down and she could do the same.

"Congratulations, Sarah."

He held out his hand for her to shake. She took it hesitantly, surprised at how painfully tight his grip was. The pressure of his grasp must have been too much for the weak bandage holding the cuts on her palm closed, because when Jason withdrew his hand it was smeared with a small amount of blood.

He casually wiped his hand down his bright white tie tie, leaving a trail of blood against the pale fabric while still smiling.

"You're excused now. Have a nice day, Sarah."

Unnerved, she exited the office as quickly as she could.

Transferring both the digital and physical files from her old station to her new one proved to be exhausting, especially given her current state. By the time the work day was over, all she wanted to do was go home and sleep. As walked down the sidewalk away from Orion, she fished her phone out of her purse to call Matt. The line rang several times before he answered.

"Sarah?"

"Hi. Sorry, I know you're probably at work."

"What's going on?"

"Um, well, I figured that you'd probably be stopping by tonight. To talk about work. And I was wondering if maybe we could meet up earlier than usual tonight? Like, maybe sometime in the next couple of hours?"

"Is something wrong?"

"No, no, I just, um…I'm kind of tired," she admitted, rubbing her eyes. "Really tired, actually. I was going to go to bed early tonight, and your usual visiting hours aren't exactly early in the evening, so…"

There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and Sarah had to pull the phone away from her ear for a second to check the screen and see if the call dropped. It hadn't.

"Matt? Is—is that okay?"

"Yeah," he responded finally, sounding distracted. "That's fine. Listen…why don't we meet at my place?"

"At your place?" she repeated confusedly.

"Yeah. Do you remember where it is?"

"Um…yeah, I do. I guess that's…fine."

"Okay. I'm finishing up at the office now, so I'm about to head home. You can come by in about an hour."

"Okay," she agreed slowly, furrowing her brow at the sudden change in routine.

"I'll see you then," he said, and hung up.

Sarah stared down at the screen suspiciously, caught off guard by his odd behavior. On the other hand, she debated, when did she ever understand anything Matt did?

The subway ride to work had been nearly unbearable, and Sarah found herself willing to walk the extra few blocks to Matt's apartment to avoid having to sit through it again. She was used to the impersonal atmosphere of living in a large city; most of the time she found comfort in it. You could walk around New York in a chicken suit and no one would bat an eyelash. So she had been unprepared for the extent to which people didn't bother to hide their stares on the subway that morning. And during her walk to Matt's she was unpleasantly surprised to find that passersby didn't fare much better.

Because of this, she was relieved at the idea of spending time with someone who couldn't see what she looked like. It felt odd to knock on Matt's door in the middle of the day, without any sort of life-threatening injury waiting on the other side. He answered quickly, as though he had already heard her coming up the stairs. He was still wearing his work attire, although he had already ditched the tie and the jacket.

Sarah lingered uncertainly around the entrance to the living room, leaning against the separating wall as Matt headed towards the kitchen. She slowly slipped off the scarf and the button-up sweater she had been wearing. They were both unbearably hot, and it wasn't like Matt could see the bruises she was trying to hide anyway. She couldn't tell if he had the heat on high in his apartment, or if it was just her, but she still felt warm in the thin t-shirt she wore underneath.

"Do you want a beer?" Matt asked, already heading towards the kitchen.

"Yeah, actually," Sarah said. "A beer would be great."

Matt grabbed two bottles out of the fridge, handing one to Sarah before making his way over to the coffee table, where he started gathering the papers that were spread out there.

Sarah looked down at the beer he had given her. The corner of her mouth turned up slightly when she saw the label. It was Lauren's favorite brand of beer. They used to sneak that particular brand into their dorm room their freshman year of college, walking slowly past the resident assistant's room and hoping that the muffled clinking in their backpacks didn't give them away. And now here Sarah was, drinking the same brand with the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. She shook her head ruefully at the interesting new direction her life had taken.

The cap was a twist-off, and she clumsily tried to twist it with her bandaged hands, unable to get a good grasp on it. After a few unsuccessful attempts to unscrew the cap, she finally managed to get it off, only to have the perforated edge of the cap get caught on the loose threads of the bandage on her hand, which had slowly started to come undone throughout the day.

"Why'd you want to meet here?" she asked Matt curiously as she tried to pull the cap away without further unraveling the gauze.

Matt hesitated before answering as he continued gathering up the papers and putting them into a folder. "Because I called Claire and asked her to come here as well. She'll be here soon."

Sarah tilted her head in confusion, glancing up at him and pausing her attempts to extricate the bottle cap. "What? Why?"

"I think I might spoken too soon the other night," Matt said carefully. "About the cut on your back not being infected. You're clearly in a lot of pain. And you have a fever; I can tell from over here. I could hear on the phone that you're tired. You said so yourself."

"That's just because I haven't been sleeping," she argued distractedly, shaking her hand as she went back to trying to dislodge the cap from the bandage.

"Well, maybe she can help you with that. Just let her take a look at you. Then we can talk about what's going on at your work."

"Is that why you sounded so sketchy on the phone?" Sarah asked in annoyance, flapping her hand more vigorously. "You were planning this—like—nurse trap—"

"What are you doing?" he interrupted her exasperatedly.

As soon as he asked, the cap finally came loose from the bandage, flying off and hitting the window with a loud clink. She jumped guiltily at the noise.

"Nothing," she mumbled before finally taking a sip from her beer. Growing tired of standing, she made her way over to the couch and took a seat.

Matt shook his head and went back to clearing the coffee table off. After a minute or so of silence, he spoke up again. "Can I ask why you bothered bandaging your hands up?"

Sarah frowned in confusion. "What do you mean? You bandaged them."

"I mean before that. You got into a cab with your face still bleeding and blood soaking through the back of your shirt. And you barely seemed to notice that your wrist was sprained. But you took the time to wrap bandages around your hands."

She looked down at her hands and frowned. In all honesty, she hadn't even realized that the only thing she had bothered tending to where her hands, but once he said it she realized it was true, and she already knew why.

"Oh. I, uh…I don't know if it'll make a lot of sense, actually," she admitted.

He waited as she traced the edge of one of the bandages, debating whether to share that particular piece of information with him.

"I played the piano," she said finally. At Matt's uncomprehending look, she elaborated. "Before I started working at Orion. I was a pianist. Accompaniment, mostly. And, um…injuring your hands can be kind of a deal breaker. Cut a tendon too deep, or break your finger the wrong way and you're—you're done. And I'd like to go back to playing someday, if my life ever gets back to normal. So I guess it was just kind of…an old habit. It's silly," she muttered.

"A piano player," Matt said slowly as he processed the new information. "You've never brought that up before. What you did before Orion."

"Well, you had a habit of, um…breaking people's fingers when we first met," she reminded him tentatively.

The implication behind her words hung in the air between them, and Sarah tried to read his expression, but with no luck; he paused for only a second at her words before turning to bring his stack of folders over to the kitchen counter.

From across the room, Sarah studied his face, where the ghost of a cut still lingered above his dark glasses. If she looked closely at his shoulder, she could just barely see the outline of a thick bandage through his white shirt. She felt a small pang of guilt; in all of her worrying about her own wounds, she'd forgotten that he was still badly injured, as well.

"How's your shoulder?" she asked him, and he looked mildly surprised, like he, too, had forgotten about his injuries.

"It's fine," he replied, running his fingers over the area. "Some of the stitches you did came undone during the fight at Orion, but enough of them held out that it's still mostly closed."

"Mostly closed? Sounds like bad handiwork to me," she said only half-jokingly, recalling how unsteady her stitching had been. "Don't you get blood on your work clothes?"

"Sometimes. You should talk."

Sarah cocked her head at the comment. Her back definitely wasn't bleeding right now, so Foggy must have told him about her bleeding yesterday.

"Foggy ratted me out?"

"Foggy?" Matt said innocently, and Sarah narrowed her eyes at him disbelievingly.

"Yeah. Foggy," she said pointedly. "He stopped by my place yesterday. Something about 'catching up on life', I think."

Matt raised his eyebrows interestedly and took a sip of his beer, but didn't say anything. Sarah rolled her eyes at his stubborn refusal to acknowledge that he'd obviously sent Foggy to check on her. She studied his face carefully for a few seconds before continuing.

"He brought me an ice pack. I thought that was interesting, how he somehow knew that I needed one," she said lightly, glancing down at her finger idly tracing the rim of her beer bottle as she spoke.

"Well, Foggy's a smart guy," Matt said lightly, shrugging a shoulder. "He went to Columbia, you know."

Sarah's mouth quirked up and she shook her head, unconvinced.

"Well, I thought it was very kind," she said softly. "Of Foggy."

Matt acknowledged her thanks with a small, crooked smile before circling around to the front of the arm chair and sitting down heavily. He looked tired, she observed.

"He _did_ rat you out, though," Matt pointed out.

"I specifically told him not to tell you."

"Yeah, he told me that, too," he said. "I'd be able to tell anyway, you know. Your heart rate and body temperature are off, your muscles are tense. You're moving differently. There's no way you can pass as being totally fine."

Sarah wrinkled her nose at his laundry list of things that we off about her. "Did you ever think about becoming a doctor instead of a lawyer, with all of the creepy stuff you can tell about people's bodies?"

"I don't think a blind doctor would have a lot of eager patients," Matt replied wryly, before tilting his head back thoughtfully. "Then again, I guess I don't have many eager clients as a blind lawyer, either."

"That might have less to do with you being blind and more to do with you being, like…you know," she said vaguely, but he just tilted his head and waited while she tried to figure out how to word what she was saying. "Well, I mean—you know, you're a little… _intense_."

Matt raised his eyebrows at her. "You realize I don't generally wear my Daredevil suit to court."

"I don't think it's just the suit that scares people," she pointed out hesitantly.

"What does that mean?"

"Well, just…whatever it is that makes you put on that mask doesn't just go away when you take it off. I mean, the costume definitely isn't, like, _jolly_ , but…I've seen you be pretty scary without it, too. It's not the mask that's intimidating," she finished falteringly.

Matt exhaled sharply in what almost resembled a laugh before taking a deep drink from his beer.

"I guess if anyone would know, it'd be you," he said quietly.

"I guess so. Me and a bunch of comatose Russians."

He looked like he was about to respond, but suddenly turned his attention towards the front door. He stood and headed towards the door a few seconds before a knock came; Sarah assumed he must have heard Claire coming up the stairs, as well. He disappeared around the wall dividing the living room from the entrance way, and Sarah heard him quietly conversing with the woman at the door for a minute. She finished the last of her beer and then, as a last minute thought, threw her gauzy scarf back on, to at least cover the bruises on her neck. The rest would just have to stay visible, because it was too hot to put the sweater back on.

She had just finished carefully arranging the scarf as Matt came back into the living room, followed by a pretty, dark-skinned woman in a hooded jacket who Sarah assumed must be Claire.

Sarah pushed her hair behind her hair and gave the woman a short, awkward wave. She responded with a weary smile as she slipped her shoulder bag off and sat on the couch next to Sarah.

"You must be Sarah," she said. "I'm Claire."

"Nice to meet you," Sarah responded, relieved that the nurse—who probably saw much worse than this every day—showed no visible reaction to Sarah's battered appearance, beyond a quick, clinical-looking scan from the head down.

"Matt tells me that you have a couple of pretty nasty cuts that he wanted me to take a look at."

"Uh, yeah," Sarah said. "There's one on my back that's been bothering me."

"Alright." Claire snapped on some latex gloves as she spoke. "Let's take a look, then."

Sarah repositioned herself so that she was facing away from the other woman and lifted up the back of her shirt. Claire gently peeled away the bandage there. She hummed in disapproval at whatever she saw.

"No, that's not pretty."

Sarah nodded. "Yeah. It doesn't feel great either."

"Can I ask why you can't go to the hospital for this?" Claire asked tiredly. "Please tell me you aren't a masked vigilante, too."

Sarah brightened, glancing back at Claire over her shoulder. "You think I look like I could fight crime? That's so nice of you. Um, but no, I'm not a vigilante. I—I just got hurt doing something that wasn't…quite on the up and up?"

"Not quite on the up and up," Claire repeated slowly, throwing an exasperated but slightly amused glance at Matt, who was leaning against the counter that divided the living room from the kitchen. "Isn't that kind of your catchphrase?"

"I think stronger wording is probably called for, at this point," Matt replied wryly.

"I bet." Claire turned back to Sarah and shone a small flashlight over the cut on her back. "So…if you're not doing the crime fighting, how did you get mixed up in all of this?"

Sarah glanced at Matt out of the corner of her eye, trying to gauge his reaction to the question. Surprisingly, he just pressed his lips together and then took a long drink from his beer, giving no indication of whether she was supposed to answer the question truthfully.

"Um…I just…kind of…stumbled into it," she stammered finally. Not technically a lie, since it _was_ her quite literally stumbling upon the fight at Orion that led to her accidentally discovering Daredevil and effectively catapulting herself into her current situation.

"Very vague," Claire noted lightly. "Between the two of you, I can't imagine how you ever have any conversations. Well, tell me, were dumpsters involved?"

"Um, yeah, actually, sometimes," Sarah looked over at Matt again in confusion. He visibly winced at the question, shaking his head, although she wasn't sure why.

"Oh?" Claire sounded surprised and amused, which made Sarah think that perhaps her experience with Matt and dumpsters was a good bit different than her own.

"It wasn't—it's a different—" Matt said, pinching the bridge of his nose, then muttered quietly, "Why did I do this?"

Claire smirked at his obvious discomfort. "I don't know. First you fill up my nights off with your own injuries, and now you're bringing me other mysteriously injured people, too. You can turn around now, Sarah."

Sarah let her shirt fall back down and maneuvered her aching back until she was leaning against the arm of the couch, facing Claire. Matt remained leaning against the counter a little ways away from the couch.

"Well, it _is_ infected," Claire said, peeling her latex gloves off. "But it really shouldn't be. Not with a wound that shallow. And it's bleeding more than it should. Have you always been a slow healer?"

"No, not really," Sarah said, frowning as she tried to remember previous injuries. "About average, I think."

"How's your diet? You seem a little thin."

"It…could be better," Sarah admitted.

"Do you get a good amount of sleep?"

"Not—not really. Just a few hours, lately."

"Mmm. This may be a silly question, but I suppose you have a lot of stress in your life right now?"

Sarah laughed shortly, raising her eyebrows.

"I'll take that as a yes. Have you been drinking at all since you got hurt?" Claire asked. Sarah winced guiltily at the question.

"Um…not really. A little. I had some wine yesterday. Also a little bit of whiskey earlier today," she admitted, averting her eyes from Claire's look of exasperation. "And then a beer just now."

Claire raised her eyebrows and then glanced over at Matt. "You really do offer a drink to every girl that comes through here."

"Just the beer," Matt said. "I don't know anything about the rest."

"I'm surprised Foggy didn't tattle on me for drinking wine yesterday," Sarah muttered resentfully.

"You and Foggy were drinking wine together?" Matt asked confusedly.

"I was drinking wine. Foggy was judging me."

"We're getting off topic here," Claire interrupted calmly, before fixing Sarah with a disapproving look. "You realize these are all things that slow down your healing process, right? Make you more likely to get infections? Drinking, stress, not eating right, not sleeping right."

_You just described my entire life_ , Sarah thought gloomily.

"I know," she said reluctantly. "I'm working on it."

Claire sighed. "Are you in a lot of pain?"

"No," Sarah lied automatically, wanting to move on from the topic. "I feel fine, mostly."

Claire gave her the sort of thoroughly unconvinced look that nurses were so good at. Not breaking from her gaze, she called out, "Matt. Is she in a lot of pain?"

"Yep."

Sarah threw him a dirty look, but either he didn't pick up on it—doubtful—or he was studiously pretending not to notice. Looking back to Claire, she sighed in defeat.

"It's just my back that's hurting me, mostly," she admitted. "And—and also, the rest of my body."

"I figured as much," Claire responded, giving her a mildly reproving look. "I always get a few patients like you come through the ER."

"Patients like me?"

"The ones who pretend like nothing is wrong with them so that no one causes a fuss over them. Usually it's stubborn old men, but occasionally I get a young person who does it, too."

Sarah gave her a guilty look but didn't argue.

"On the other hand," Claire continued, turning to aim a significant look at Matt, "you have those who will freely admit that they're badly injured, but can't quite seem to stop themselves from going out and making it worse anyway."

Matt laughed at that, and Sarah briefly noted how much younger he looked when he was genuinely smiling.

"Yeah, well, speaking of which," he said, setting his empty beer bottle down on the counter and heading towards the large metal doors where Foggy had procured the first aid kit the first night Sarah had come here, "I'm going to go get changed. Sun's going down soon."

Matt disappeared into his bedroom with an armful of black costume and combat boots, while Claire dug through her bag until she brought out two small bottles. She handed one to Sarah.

"This is for the infection. It should clear up your fever by tomorrow, and the pain should lessen, too. It won't go away completely, though. Your back is basically one giant bruise right now. But the cut itself will be less tender once the infection dies down."

"Thanks," Sarah said, taking the bottle from Claire, who then held out a second, smaller bottle.

"This should help you with rest of the pain. At least for the next few days."

Sarah recognized the familiar name on the bottle of painkillers immediately. "Oh, um…no, thanks. I don't—I don't think that'd be a good idea."

Claire raised her eyebrows and looked like she was about to question her, so Sarah continued hurriedly.

"Do most nurses get to carry their own prescriptions around with them?"

"No. But when you spend your nights off fixing up vigilantes and their secretive, injured friends, you need to have a few supplies on hand."

"Oh, I—I think friends is probably wording it a bit strongly," Sarah said, but as the words came out of her mouth she felt a brief glimmer of guilt. After all, Matt _had_ gone out of his way to arrange for his nurse friend to come over on her night off, specifically to take a look at her. "I mean, we're not _not_ friends—but we're also just not…friends." Sarah shook her head at how unintelligible her explanation was. "It's—it's complicated."

"That I can understand. You don't need to explain to me that things with Matt can be complicated. All that matters is that he's helping you with…whatever all this is. Right?" Claire asked concernedly, waving her hand over the bruises that punctuated Sarah's skin.

She nodded tightly. "Yeah. He's just about the only person helping me, actually."

The other woman nodded, still looking mildly worried. "Alright. Just…whatever you're doing…whatever _both_ of you are doing: be careful. I don't want to see either of you ending up in my emergency room. Or the morgue."

The door to Matt's room opened before Sarah could respond, and he came out wearing his Daredevil outfit, sans the mask. It was odd to see him go from Day Matt to Night Matt so quickly.

"Everything good?"

"Yeah. Should be fixed soon enough with some antibiotics," Claire said as she finished packing her things back into her shoulder bag and stood.

"You on the other hand," Claire said to Matt, "You probably shouldn't be going out. From what I gather, you had a busy night last night."

Matt's expression was unreadable. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. You forget that I get to see all of your leftovers when you're done with them? Cops were bringing them through all night long. Even more so than usual. They all had outstanding warrants for some pretty ugly crimes. Assault, rape, battery…I'm guessing you probably already know that."

He nodded with his lips pressed together.

Claire reached up and gently tilted Matt's face towards hers. "That how you get the busted lip? Bad guys don't usually get lucky enough to get you in the face like that."

Sarah pursed her lips and looked down, feeling her face heat up. Matt clearly picked up on her uncomfortable reaction, and the ghost of a smirk crossed his face. "Yeah, I, uh…wasn't expecting it, I guess."

Claire's phone chirped, and she glanced at the screen. Sighing, she swung her bag over her shoulder.

"Looks like it's not my night off, after all. Someone called in sick; I have to cover their shift. You didn't need me to look at any of your own…battle wounds tonight, did you?"

Matt shook his head. "No. Thanks for coming, Claire."

Claire nodded tiredly at him, but there was a small smile on her face. Turning to Sarah, she waved. "Take those antibiotics. No more drinking until you're better. Also, get some sleep. And some food."

Sarah laughed a little at the long list of instructions. "I will."

Claire and Matt disappeared around the corner into the hallway again, and Sarah could hear them conversing lowly before the front door closed and Matt came back into the room.

"Why didn't you let her look at the rest of your injuries?" he asked.

"I knew you were listening in on us."

"You were speaking loudly."

"We were talking at a quiet conversational level, if anything," she argued.

"Seemed loud to me," Matt said with a shrug. He nodded to her hands with raised eyebrows. "You didn't want her to check your hands? Or your wrist?"

"No. They're fine," she said tiredly.

He tilted his head, observing her for a minute. "You know, just because you tell a lie all day long doesn't make it not a lie."

Sarah sighed deeply, wanting nothing more than to change the subject.

"I know that, Matt. It's just embarrassing to talk about," she said quietly. "It's embarrassing even when I'm _not_ talking about it. You can't see how I look. It's not like when you go out and get hurt saving some kid or kicking in criminals' heads. Every person who's seen me today has taken one look at me and been able to tell I got the shit beaten out of me. And—and I appreciate you bringing her in to help with the infection, I really do, but…beyond that I kind of just wanted to not think about it anymore."

Matt looked disapproving, but didn't argue. Sarah felt a little bad for rejecting basically every attempt he had made at trying to help her tonight, so she spoke again, quieter this time.

"Thank you for calling Claire for me. I know that you're not crazy about the idea of me being around your friends."

Matt hesitated before shaking his head. "It's…not a problem."

His response wasn't what she had expected—she wasn't sure what she _had_ been expecting. Some threatening comment about her not putting Claire in danger, possibly.

"You must have to call her a lot," Sarah guessed. "With your habit of fighting while horribly injured."

An odd, sad look flashed across Matt's face briefly. "Ah…not really. Not as much as—as when I first started. I try not to call her unless it's important."

It was obvious that there was more to the story than that, but Sarah didn't want to push. Glancing out at the ridiculous billboard outside Matt's window, she stifled a yawn for the umpteenth time that night. It didn't escape Matt's notice.

"You said you haven't been sleeping?"

"Hmm? Oh. Well, I go to sleep, but then I wake up and my mind is going and I just can't fall back asleep," Sarah explained.

"Do you ever meditate?"

"Meditate? Like…?" Sarah held her hands up in what she thought might be the 'ohm' position questioningly.

Matt frowned and tilted his head. "You're doing something with your hands."

"I—nevermind," she said, shaking her head and letting her hands fall back down. "No, I don't meditate. I don't even know how to meditate."

"It's not hard, if you practice."

"Do _you_ meditate?" she asked doubtfully. When she thought of meditation, she mostly thought of girls in yoga pants, so the idea of Matt meditating threw her off. She didn't think he'd find that particular mental association entertaining, so she kept it to herself.

"Yeah. I have since I was a kid. It speeds up the healing process, which you could use. And it helps calm you down, which you could _definitely_ use."

Sarah laughed lowly at that. "Fair enough. Maybe I'll try it. Let's just talk about work so I can go home and at least try to sleep."

Matt nodded, then grabbed his mask from where he had thrown it on the table earlier.

"Let's go, then."

"What?"

"I'll walk you home. You can update me on the way."

"You don't have to walk me home," Sarah said, slightly embarrassed by the idea of needing an escort just to go a few city blocks.

"It's already dark out. I have to go out anyway."

"You let Claire walk home by herself," Sarah pointed out.

"Claire was walking half a block to the bus stop, and she doesn't have anyone potentially stalking her."

She looked at him, then sighed. "If I say no, are you just going to creepily follow me home up in the shadows somewhere anyway?"

He just cocked his head and her and raised an eyebrow. She rolled her eyes, but put up no further argument. If she was honest, the idea of having Matt walk her home did make her feel safer, and she couldn't figure out when that had happened. When did the idea of being around the vigilante start sounding safer than being alone? The realization threw her, and she didn't know what to think of it.

"Okay. Alright. Are we just going to walk down the street with you in your costume? Because I think we might stick out a little, and I'm getting enough unwanted attention as it is, looking like a walking domestic violence poster."

"I know a shortcut," he said. "It'll keep us out of sight."

"Is it rooftops?" she asked him suspiciously. "Because I'm not doing rooftops."

Matt chuckled. "It's not rooftops."

"Is it through sketchy alleyways?"

He paused. "It might be."

Sarah fixed him with a doubtful look and crossed her arms. "You know, alleyways…historically, not a good place for us."

"I'll be on my best behavior," he promised as he slipped his mask on over the top half of his face. He reached behind him and grabbed her sweater from where she had draped it over the back of the chair, holding it out to her expectantly.

Sarah inhaled deeply, taking a second to acknowledge how ridiculous this whole situation would have seemed to her just a few weeks ago. After a moment, she took the sweater from him and slipped it on.

"Alright. Lead the way."


	13. In the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends! Look, it didn't take me a month and a half to get the next chapter up! Thanks so much for all of the well-wishes; I'm feeling much better, and I've even been able to go back to work. I thought I’d give you guys one last lighthearted (for the most part) chapter before all of the angst and drama comes parading through.

The weather was steadily getting warmer, and Sarah found that she didn't need her sweater for the walk home, even with the evening chill. She folded it up and fidgeted with the fabric in her hands as she and Matt made their way through an alleyway, letting her mind drift to the comfortable bed that was waiting for her at home.

Matt was a good bit taller than she was, and she had to take two steps for each of his strides. It wasn't until she tripped over a flattened cardboard box that he seemed to notice how quickly she was walking to keep up with him, and he slowed down.

Sarah glanced over at him as he fell back to keep in step with her.

"Are you sure you can afford to walk me home?" she asked him. "Isn't there, like…crime you should be stopping?"

He shook his head. "Most of it won't start up for another couple of hours, when people start leaving the bars. But I'm keeping an ear out."

"Oh," she said, then squinted at him. "So, at any moment you might just…parkour away and leave me in this maze of sketchy alleyways?"

Matt chuckled. "It's possible. You might want to actually start telling me about what happened at work, just in case."

Sarah blushed as she realized that she'd been walking in silence for the first ten minutes of the walk, so completely lost in her own thoughts that she had forgotten she was supposed to be updating him on Orion. After all, he wasn't just walking her home to be nice; this was still a business meeting of sorts.

"Sorry," she muttered tiredly. "You should have said something."

He shrugged. "I figured you'd snap back to earth eventually. What happened today?"

"Nothing good. I got promoted," she said gloomily.

"Promoted to…what?"

"I can't really tell what my new title is. It was all very vague. Like a secretary, but with extra stuff. Something about running errands, which sounds less than legal," she grumbled. "I'll be working for Jason now. Which I'm not looking forward to. He's very…unsettling is the word, I guess."

"How so?" Matt asked suspiciously.

"I don't know. It's hard to describe. It's like he's not even human. I…I just can't read him. I don't understand what he's thinking or what he wants. With Ronan, at least I knew what he wanted," she said, and even in the dark she could see Matt's jaw twitch in that now-familiar way. "And that was awful, obviously, but not being able to read Jason at all is worse."

"You think he's going to try to hurt you?"

"No," she said slowly. "Well, not right now. But I also get the feeling that if I wound up dead, he wouldn't care at all. Which makes me a little nervous about the kinds of errands he'll be sending me on. A lot nervous, actually. Ronan was…a lot of awful thing. Mean, and creepy, and gross. But he was also dumb, which was nice. Jason is smart, and I know he doesn't trust me."

"Do you think you'll still be able to stay below the radar?"

She frowned and looked down, carefully stepping over a few plastic crates scattered around the ground. "I mean, I'm going to try, obviously. But in case you haven't noticed, I'm not very good at all of this, so who knows."

"You're doing alright."

Sarah had to laugh at that. "I'm doing _awful_. I'm the Amelia Bedelia of spies, Matt."

"You could be doing worse."

"How so?"

Matt shrugged. "You…could be dead."

"Thank you. That's comforting."

"Or you could have run off and left the whole thing behind."

"Don't think I haven't thought about it," she muttered under her breath. Sometimes she still forgot about his enhanced hearing, and she winced when he turned his head in her direction at the comment. "Not—not that I'm going to."

"You said yourself that you aren't a professional spy. No one expects you to be."

"Apparently Claire does. Did you hear her ask me if I'm a vigilante, too?"

"I did hear that," he said, cracking a small grin and shaking his head. "I guess if a blind guy can do it…"

"Oh, I could totally do it. They'd have to be very small criminals, though," Sarah said thoughtfully, watching her feet in the dark so she didn't trip. "Or very lazy ones. Jaywalkers, maybe. Or litterers."

Matt chuckled slightly, presumably at the image of Sarah intimidating any sort of criminal.

"People who ride their bikes on the sidewalk," he offered. "They always knock into me."

"That's a good one," she agreed. "Maybe people who don't let others get off the subway before they try to get on."

"I'm not sure that's actually against the law."

"Maybe not," she admitted. "But it's a dick move, anyway."

"Always been enough motivation for me."

"I've noticed. I don't think I'd be very good at hitting people, though. Turns out, it kind of hurts your hands," she said idly, frowning at her split knuckles before looking up at Matt, who she could have sworn was smirking slightly at the obvious statement. "You…probably already knew that, though. Because you hit people for a living."

"Practicing law is my living, actually," he reminded her. "And you were probably doing it wrong."

"Practicing law wrong?"

"Punching wrong."

"Alright, well…we didn't all go to vigilante school, Matthew," she grumbled.

Matt laughed. The sound was short and sudden, like her remark had taken him by surprise. "I just mean that it doesn't hurt that much if you have a good technique."

"I _have_ a good technique. It's called not getting into fights with people."

"Right. I never quite mastered that one."

She gave him a sideways glance. "Shocker."

He laughed again, and she found herself studying his face, hoping he didn't notice her staring. It was so rare that she got to see him show any sort of sense of humor, and amusement still seemed like such an oddly foreign thing to see on his masked face.

He took a sharp turn around a corner, and she followed. He led them down a darkened side street with a few old cars parked along the side.

"This is a pretty convoluted shortcut," she pointed out, eying the broken windows that dotted the buildings above them.

"Maybe not one you should take by yourself."

"I don't just go wandering down dark side streets in Hell's Kitchen by myself," she protested. "I do have some sense of self-preservation, you know."

"Yeah?" Matt said, turning around to face her while lazily walking backwards. "I don't know if I need to point out that you're currently following a masked vigilante through a bunch of darkened back alleys."

"Well—okay, that's fair. But this is a one-time thing. Meanwhile, you know this route so well that you're just walking backwards like it's no big deal," she pointed out in exasperation.

"Why would that be any different than walking forwards? I can't see anything either way."

Sarah narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously, trying to figure out if he was bullshitting her.

"So, what, there's no difference for you between what's in front of you or behind you?"

"Not really. It's sort of a 360 thing," Matt explained, swinging back around so that he was walking forward again, keeping even with Sarah's slower pace. "People with sight see what's in front of them, and a little bit of what's beside them. But the way my senses work…I pick up on every direction equally. Comes in handy when I'm fighting, since there's no real difference between someone sneaking up behind me or attacking me to my face."

Sarah observed the dark alleyway as they continued their trek, trying to imagine what it would be like to be equally aware of everything around her. It sounded overwhelming.

As if on cue, something far away seemed to catch Matt's attention. Whatever it was, Sarah couldn't hear it, but she knew Matt was listening when he stopped walking and tilted his head to the side slightly.

"What's wrong?" she whispered.

He shook his head. "Cops around the corner. They're on one of the sides streets I was going to take us down. Checking out an abandoned vehicle, or something."

"Do we need to turn around?"

"Nah," he said, walking farther down the side street before coming to a stop next to a narrow space between two buildings. "We'll take a detour."

Sarah looked down the alleyway—if it could even be called that—dubiously. It was incredibly narrow, to the point where they'd have to walk single file through it, which was not an appealing idea to her. Even less appealing was the complete lack of light; the alley was covered by construction awnings, effectively blocking out even the weak light from the apartment windows above. She could see about three feet into the space; beyond that it was pitch black.

"You're joking," she said.

"This will take us almost all the way over to your apartment."

"But there's no light. I can't see anything."

"Sounds hard," he said dryly.

"I—okay—very funny," she said, glaring at him. "I'm serious, I do not want to go down there."

Matt sighed and tipped his head back against the brick wall, looking exasperated. "Okay. You don't have to. But _I'm_ going down there."

She looked at him suspiciously. "You're the one who insisted on walking me home, I know you aren't going to just leave me here."

He tilted his head and slowly took a few steps back into the dark alley. "Are you sure?"

"Matt!" she whispered loudly as he started to disappear into the shadows. "You cannot seriously want us to go that way. There could be serial killers in there."

"You really think there are multiple mass murderers in this tiny alley?" Matt asked. Sarah just shrugged. "All I ever run into down this alleyway is the occasional homeless person."

"That's not any better. Foggy and I stole that shopping cart from a homeless person not too long ago. We're probably on some sort of list."

"I don't think homeless people really organize themselves that way," Matt pointed out, before stepping back out of the shadows and towards her. "I promise there is no one anywhere near this alleyway but us."

"Is—is that supposed to make me feel better or worse?" she asked tentatively.

"Look, this is the only other route that doesn't require climbing over rooftops, which you've already made clear that you don't want to do," he said. "You'll be fine. Just follow me."

If Sarah's phone wasn't close to dying, she would have brought it out to use it as a flashlight. Instead, she repressed a frustrated sigh and took a few steps forward until she was behind him. He quickly disappeared into the shadows of the small alleyway, and she followed.

The trip did not go well. Sarah didn't like the way the walls felt like they were closing in on her, and she tripped over objects or stepped on gross sounding mystery items almost constantly.

She squinted ahead of her, thinking that Matt had moved off to the left. She did the same, and ended up tripping over something that made a loud clattering noise, echoing off the walls of the alleyway. The vigilante came to a halt ahead of her.

"Sorry, sorry," she whispered.

Matt sighed, then stepped off to the side. "Switch with me."

"What?"

"It'll be easier to guide you through if you go first. Then you wont trip over every paint can and trash bag we come across."

Sarah wrinkled her nose at the jab, but had to admit he was right. Reluctantly, she slipped past him, brushing against him in the narrow alleyway. Once she was in front of him, he put his hand on her upper right arm. His other hand hovered over her left arm, but he apparently couldn't find a spot that was free of bruises, so instead he placed his hand lightly on her waist. She jumped slightly, caught off guard by the contact. Matt didn't say anything, just gave her a light push to get her to start walking forward.

At first she was hesitant, worried that she'd run into something, especially now that Matt's hand on her arm made it difficult for her to put both hands out in front of her as a shield. But true to his word, he guided her safely through the alley, gently steering her around things that she couldn't see, but that he must have been able to sense.

"This is a fabulous shortcut, Matt," she mumbled. "There are probably rats in here."

"There are _definitely_ rats in here, actually. I can hear them."

"What?" she exclaimed. Her back hit his chest as she stumbled to a halt and squinted at the ground for signs of rodent movement, but Matt continued propelling her along firmly.

"You've had a mouse living in your apartment for weeks now; how can you possibly be scared of a few rats?"

"That's one tiny mouse," she argued. "And he's small and cute, and I can always see where he is. A pack of giant street rats swarming around in the dark are a different story. What if one touches my foot and I get the plague?"

Matt laughed, so quietly that she wouldn't have caught it if she couldn't feel his breath close to her ear. "I think you'll manage. Just think about something else. Did anything else happen while you were at work?"

Sarah wondered how she was supposed to think about anything other than being stuck in a pitch black alleyway with a vigilante's hand on her waist and rats potentially covering the ground, but she struggled to get her mind off the subject anyway. The only thing that stood out to her from the day was the way Jason had creepily wiped her blood on his white tie—not an image she really wanted to think about at the moment. But she told Matt about it anyway, just to have something to discuss.

"Doesn't that seem kind of psychotic?" she finished.

"I'd say so," Matt said, sounding disturbed.

"Exactly. And I mean, if _you_ think it's psychotic—" Sarah faltered awkwardly when she realized how her words sounded. She hoped he hadn't caught it, but of course, she had no such luck.

"I'm sorry, what?" His voice was close to her ear, and he sounded darkly amused.

"I mean, not that you're… _psychotic_ ," she backtracked. "Just that, you know, your threshold for psychotic stuff might be, um, higher than—most people's—"

He steered her to the right slightly sharper than was strictly necessarily, and she stumbled a tiny bit, although his grip on her arm and waist kept her from actually falling.

"Friendly reminder that you did say you'd be on your best behavior," she said nervously.

"That's true. But to be fair, I never specified how good my best behavior is."

"Matt…"

"Be a shame if you whacked your head on a fire escape."

Sarah looked back at him in alarm, but obviously couldn't see his face in the dark. "I can't tell if you're joking."

"Good."

"This is not helping make you seem less psychotic," she mumbled.

But Matt didn't steer her into any fire escapes or other painful objects, and within a couple of minutes they were at the end of the narrow alleyway. When they emerged, she was surprised to see that they actually were very close to her apartment building; only about a block away.

Sarah took a deep breath of fresh air. She never thought that she would consider the air in Hell's Kitchen to be fresh, but compared to the dank alley they had just been in, this was like an open meadow. She couldn't imagine how bad parts of the city must stink to someone with a super enhanced sense of smell.

"That was kind of a terrifying shortcut. I mean, I appreciate you walking me home. But maybe next time I could just text you when I get home safely, like normal people?" she asked, half joking. She winced when she realized that might be a stupid suggestion. "Or—I mean—I don't know if you can text, I guess."

Matt looked mildly offended by the suggestion, although it was difficult to tell under the mask.

"I'm blind; I'm not eighty," he said. "There are phone apps I can use to send text messages."

"Well, I know that. It's just that you use a flip phone that I think is from the nineteen nineties, so I didn't know if it was able to do that. But being able to text you would be a lot easier than always having to call you."

Matt frowned in confusion, and Sarah realized that they were talking about two different phones. "Oh. Right. No, I…I can't read texts on my burner phone."

"Oh. Okay. Well, nevermind," Sarah said awkwardly, looking down. "I can just call you if I need you."

Matt's frown didn't disappear. He seemed to be debating something, so Sarah stayed quiet and looked up at some of the windows they were passing by. After a few minutes of walking in silence Matt suddenly stopped, turning to her. When he didn't speak right away, she shifted her weight from one foot to the other uncomfortably.

"What…what are you doing?" she asked finally.

He tipped his head back for a moment, almost as if he was looking up at the sky, before exhaling deeply and facing her again. "Do you have your phone on you?"

Sarah pulled her phone out of her pocket slowly, raising an eyebrow at him. "Are you…stealing my phone because yours is old?"

"No. I'm—I'm giving you my real number," he said reluctantly. "For my actual cell phone."

Sarah blinked at him in surprise. "Like your…Matt Murdock cell phone?"

"Yeah," he said warily. "That one. If you need to text me, use this number. Don't send me anything incriminating."

She nodded and brought up the contacts screen to save his number, typing in the digits he told her. The bright light of her screen lit both of their faces with an eerie blue-ish light from below, making Matt look especially similar to the devil his name evoked.

"Can I can save this one as your actual name? Since it's your day phone?" she asked uncertainly. Matt paused, then jerked his head begrudgingly, which she took as a yes.

"Good, because there's no lawyer Emoji."

"What?"

"Nothing. What am I supposed you text you about if I can't say anything incriminating? The weather?"

"Just…don't use names or specifics. Preferably don't use it at all unless you need to."

Sarah nodded quickly in agreement as she typed his name in. She was almost one hundred percent positive that she would never actually contact him on his day phone; it seemed just a bit too familiar, like she'd be crossing a line. When she looked up, he was already continuing down the alleyway a few steps ahead of her.

"You must really think Ronan's going to come after me," she said, trying to keep the nervous tinge out of her voice. "I mean, if you're walking me places and giving me your real number."

Matt took a long time to respond to her question, even by his usual taciturn standards.

"I spend a lot of my time fighting guys like Ronan," he said finally, speaking very quietly. "Guys who are obsessive…sadistic. I've seen what happens to women that they get their hands on. What Ronan tried to do to you. I'm not planning on letting him finish the job."

Sarah wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly feeling slightly chilled, although the air was still warm. She wasn't sure if that was what tipped Matt off to the anxiety building in her chest, but he spoke up again after a few moments of silence.

"I guess hearing that probably doesn't help your sleeping problem."

"It's fine. I probably wasn't going to sleep a whole lot until the sun came up anyway," Sarah admitted as she tucked her hair behind her ear.. "But tomorrow's Saturday, so I can sleep in. I usually go see my dad on Saturdays, but…I'll probably pass on that this weekend."

Matt nodded, and they walked in silence for a few minutes. It seemed like he wanted to say something, but kept stopping himself. She waited, curious to see if he would speak.

"Your dad…he's not very old," he said carefully. Sarah immediately understood the actual question behind his words. It was one that people had often.

"No. He's not. My parents had me right after they graduated high school," she said. "It's, um…it's early onset. The Alzheimer's. It started about a year ago."

"I'm sorry."

Sarah gave a half-hearted shrug, crossing her arms. She didn't like talking about her dad much if she could help it; she'd rather go back to the banter she and Matt had been having earlier, tense as it had been at times. "It's fine. It makes it a little easier for me to lie to him about what I do, at least. He still thinks I'm a pianist."

Matt considered this for a few moments, frowning deeply. "Things will get better for both of you. Once you're out of Orion."

"I guess so," she said, and he looked over at her curiously. Even though she knew he couldn't see her face, she turned it away from him and up towards the night sky instead. "It's just…with the timelines and everything. I don't really know…how long we'll really get to enjoy that time together. When all of this is done."

Sarah was dismayed to hear her voice shake slightly at the end of her sentence. She frantically tried to think of an easy change of subject, but was saved from having to do so when Matt came to a sudden stop, tilting his head to the side and concentrating on something. Sarah stopped too, watching him closely.

"There's someone in your apartment," he said, frowning.

Sarah snapped her head up towards her apartment building in alarm. "What?"

"I just picked up on it. There's a heartbeat coming from there." His frown deepened, turning to confusion. "Or two heartbeats? One's small, though. It sounds…muffled?"

Sarah ran a hand over her face as she realized what he was hearing. "Like a pregnant woman?"

Matt tilted his head again as he considered it, then nodded. "Yeah. Who is she?"

Sarah groaned in frustration, kicking a loose stone so that it whacked against the dumpster with a loud bang. "Dammit."

"Not a friend of yours?" he guessed.

"Worse. My best friend."

"And that's a…bad thing?"

"No, I'm just…avoiding being an adult," she grumbled. "Talking to people about things. Like why I look like this."

"What are you going to tell her?"

_That I got attacked by a creepy coworker for helping the Devil of Hell's Kitchen crash a hostage situation that I also unwillingly helped orchestrate, because these are things that I do now_. Sarah looked up at her apartment building helplessly, almost tempted to go back into the dark maze of alleyways rather than have this impending conversation with her best friend.

"I don't know," she admitted. "That I got mugged, maybe. Or a car accident. Either way I'm lying to someone I care about."

Matt nodded, bowing his head slightly. "That I can understand."

"Did you know it's bad luck to lie to a pregnant woman?"

The corner of his mouth twitched up. "I think your luck is bad enough already. Can't get much worse."

Sarah exhaled a rueful laugh before glancing up her building momentarily. She turned back to Matt to thank him for walking her home, but—unsurprisingly—he was already gone.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Taking a deep breath, Sarah unlocked the door to her apartment and slipped inside. Lauren was stretched out on the couch, reading a baby name book while she waited for Sarah to get home. It looked like she had been there for a while. She looked up, opening her mouth to say something—probably to immediately begin the argument that was coming—but froze when she took in Sarah's appearance.

"Oh, my God," Lauren said, struggling to get up off the couch. "Are you okay?"

"You don't have to get up," Sarah said quickly, putting a hand out to stop her heavily pregnant friend from continuing to try to stand. Instead, Sarah sat down on the couch next to her, so that they were facing each other. "I'm fine, Lauren."

Lauren immediately reached out a hand to trace the cut across Sarah's cheekbone, which was even more noticeable due to the dark bruise underneath it. Her face twisted in worry and anger as Sarah winced slightly at the contact.

"What are you doing here?" Sarah asked her softly.

"Well, I figured you'd call me back that night that I left you that message, and then we'd fight about it and, you know…be friends again," Lauren said, letting her hand drop from Sarah's face and frowning at her. "But you didn't call, and I thought maybe something was really wrong, and…I guess there is. Sarah, what _happened_?"

"Nothing," she said adamantly. "I got mugged, but I'm fine. I just didn't want to make a big deal out of it."

Lauren narrowed her eyes at her, and Sarah resisted the urge to squirm under the intense gaze of her piercingly green eyes. She had seen this look many times before; it was the one Lauren gave to people when they were lying, and they both knew it.

"You got mugged?"

"I got mugged," Sarah repeated.

"Where?"

"An alleyway."

"Which one?"

"I don't know," Sarah said defensively. "They don't name them, do they?"

"Why were you in an alleyway?"

"I—I thought it was a shortcut. It was dumb. But it's over now," she insisted, desperately hoping to get her friend to stop asking questions.

As if in answer to her prayers, Lauren finally dropped her accusatory look. Sarah resisted the urge to exhale in relief, and instead she nervously messed with one of the bandages on her hand.

"Can you grab me some water?" Lauren asked suddenly. "I've been stranded on this couch for a while now, and I'm thirsty. It basically takes me an hour to stand up."

"Yeah, of course," Sarah said quickly, relieved to have an excuse to leave the tense room. She hurried into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge.

Returning to the living room, her stomach dropped when she saw Lauren holding her wallet. She had apparently gotten it from Sarah's purse, which Sarah had left perched on the coffee table while she went into the kitchen.

"Must have been a pretty shitty mugger," Lauren said quietly, looking up from the wallet in her hands. "I mean, he left your wallet, with all of your cash and cards."

"Lauren…"

"And he didn't take the ring you're wearing, which I know you must have been wearing whenever this happened, because you've worn it every day since I've known you. You even still have your cell phone. What'd this guy mug you for, Sarah? Your Starbucks card?"

Sarah opened and closed her mouth wordlessly. She couldn't think of any way to make the lie more believable. Had it been a stranger, maybe, but Lauren always saw right through her with ease. When Sarah didn't reply, Lauren threw the wallet back into the purse and fixed her with a stern look.

"Do you remember when we were sophomores, and we were at some house party, and you got really mad at Kenny Sizemore and threw your vodka cranberry all over him?"

Sarah just stared at Lauren, bewildered by the apparently random change in topic. She slowly sat back down on the couch. "Um…yeah. I remember. Why?"

"Do you remember why you did that?"

Sarah sighed and shook her head. "Because drinking vodka makes me belligerent?"

"Well, yes," Lauren acknowledged dismissively. "But do you remember why you got so mad at him to begin with?"

Sarah thought back to that night, one of the many drunken blurs that made up a good portion of her and Lauren's shared college career. A particular memory did stick out to her from that party.

"Because…because he called you a dumb blonde bitch," Sarah recalled slowly.

"Yeah. And you told him that I might be a bitch, but I wasn't dumb. You also told him that I wasn't even a real blonde, which I didn't really appreciate, because I definitely have some naturally blonde undertones—but that's not the point. You always got so mad at anyone who treated me like I was stupid. So why are you doing the same thing to me right now?"

Sarah stared at her helplessly. She wanted nothing more than to tell Lauren everything, let it all out into the open and let her friend relieve some of the stress and fear that constantly filled her days lately. But she couldn't put that burden on Lauren, who should be focusing on her new family. Not to mention it would involve letting her in on a lot of hazardous information, and if Sarah had learned anything lately, it was that knowing too much always put you in the crosshairs of dangerous people.

"I'm sorry," Sarah whispered. "I just…I can't involve you in this. I can't. It's not safe."

" _What's_ not safe?" Lauren exclaimed. Her words were laced in frustration. "What's going on?"

"I can't _tell_ you, and if you don't want me to lie to you then you—you need to accept that," Sarah said, trying to sound firm. Instead, it just came out sounding incredibly sad.

"Are you…on something?"

"What?"

Lauren reached into Sarah's purse and pulled out the unmarked pill bottle that Claire had given her, holding it up with a concerned look on her face.

"Those are just antibiotics. I have an infected cut on my back," Sarah said, glad that she could at least be honest about that part.

Lauren only look partially convinced. "Are you sure?" she asked gently. "I would get it, you know. It wouldn't even entirely be your fault. Problems like that, they can be hereditary, and with your dad—"

"—I'm not on any drugs," Sarah interrupted her firmly.

Her friend gave her a long look before putting the pill bottle back in her purse. "Is it someone you're dating?"

"No," Sarah said adamantly. "Of course not."

"Then this has to do with that place you work at," Lauren said, shaking her head. "You've been weird ever since you started working there. You never talk about what you do, and you've lost all this weight, and now you look like you just went ten rounds in a boxing ring."

Sarah chewed the inside of her lip anxiously. There was no way she was going to be able to continue keeping Lauren one hundred percent in the dark. Not if she wanted to keep her as a friend. There had to be some middle ground between completely lying to her and letting her in on everything.

"Yeah," she said finally. "It…it's a problem I had at work."

"Someone there did this to you?"

"Yeah. A really unstable coworker. But it's—it's done. He's not there anymore, and…it's being taken care of."

"By who?" Lauren demanded. "The police? Lawyers? Both, I hope?"

"Some—something like that," Sarah said vaguely. Technically there _was_ a lawyer taking care of it…

"When did this happen?"

Sarah looked down. "Uh…the night we were supposed to meet up for dinner."

There was no immediate response, so Sarah glanced up to see Lauren looking horrified.

"And then I left you a mean message. Oh, my God. I'm an awful friend."

"What? No—" Sarah protested, but Lauren continued, growing more upset with each word.

"I'm so sorry. I was just upset because the waiter kept giving me judgmental looks because I was eating all of the breadsticks while I was waiting for you, and then you didn't show up, and he kept having to refill the basket, and I think he thought I was lying about another person coming because I just wanted free breadsticks, and you know I eat a lot of carbs when I'm upset—"

"—Lauren," Sarah interrupted her rambling gently. "It's fine. Everything you said in that message was true. I haven't been around at all for a long time, and I've been missing out on one of the most important parts of your life, and I'm really, really sorry about that. I'm working on it, I am."

Lauren let her hands rest on her swollen stomach, looking at Sarah sadly. "You know that I'm aware there's more to this than just a violent coworker, right? Something bigger is going on."

Sarah just pursed her lips and looked away.

"But…I know how you are. You've always been the independent one, and the secretive one. You play things close to the chest, and you always have. I get that, I accept that. But _this_?" Lauren said, reaching out to gently touch the injured part of Sarah's face again. "This is not okay. Please just tell me that I don't need to worry about something like this happening every time I can't get in touch with you."

"You don't. You really don't. I'm—I'm working on getting my life back to what it used to be. And I'm not doing it alone. Please don't worry about me. Okay?"

Lauren nodded, then sniffed loudly, and Sarah realize that the other woman was about to start crying.

"Oh, no. No, no, don't cry."

"I'm not crying," Lauren snapped defensively, dabbing at her bloodshot eyes with her wrist. "The—the baby is crying. You made my baby cry and she's not even born yet. You're going to make a horrible godmother."

Sarah grabbed a box of tissues from the side table, looking at Lauren hopefully. "So…that means I'm still going to be the godmother?"

Lauren threw her hands up. "Well, I don't have a lot of other options, do I? I'm not asking Greg's sister. The woman once told me that she didn't know JFK and Jack Kennedy were the same person. And he was our _hottest_ president. Of course you'll still be the godmother."

"And I still get to throw your baby shower?"

"Ugh. If you can fit one in before this kid pops out."

"Good. Now stop crying, because when you cry, I always cry, too, and you _know_ I'm an ugly crier."

Lauren laughed and took a deep, shaky breath, waving her eyes with her hands. "You really are. You get all splotchy and gross. It's not sexy."

Sarah grinned back at her as she handed her another tissue. She knew the conversation wasn't completely over—Lauren would undoubtedly bring it back up next time Sarah ditched out on plans or didn't answer her phone. But for now, her best friend wasn't mad at her, at least, and it felt like an enormous weight was lifted off her chest.

"Speaking of sexy, how many breadsticks did you eat?"

Lauren glared at her. "Never ask a pregnant woman how many breadsticks she ate. Everyone knows that, Sarah."

"There seem to be a lot of regulations about pregnant women that I've never heard before you got pregnant."

"I don't make the rules," Lauren said with a shrug. "Now, will you please help me up so I can waddle to your room?"

"Are you sleeping here tonight?"

"Of course I'm sleeping here. It's late as balls, I'm not going all the way back across town."

A short while later, after they had both gone to bed, Lauren turned her head towards Sarah in the dark, nudging her slightly with her elbow.

"You know, if you need someone to beat up your coworker, I can lend you Greg."

Sarah cracked a smile at the thought of lanky, cheerful Greg fighting anyone.

"Doesn't Greg still make you squash spiders he finds in the bathroom?"

"Fair enough. I'm kind of serious, though. Maybe it's just my maternal instincts kicking in early, but I worry about you. And don't take this the wrong way, but…you kind of have a habit of attracting trouble."

"I do not," Sarah said defensively, despite the mountain of contrary evidence that she currently called her life.

"You most definitely do," Lauren argued. "And it would just be nice if you had someone to act as a sort of, you know…buffer. Between you and said trouble. What about that guy I talked to on the phone at the bar?"

"You didn't talk to him so much as you yelled inappropriate things at him until he hung up on you," Sarah reminded her.

"Right, him. The cranky one. Are you still seeing him?"

"I was never seeing him, you made that up in your head," Sarah protested. Lauren just waited impatiently for her to answer the question, which she did, begrudgingly. "He's…around, yeah."

"Is he still cranky?"

Sarah snorted. "Yes. But you get used to it."

Lauren shook her head and yawned. "Well, tell him to direct that grumpiness at people who deserve it. Like your coworker."

"I can take care of myself," Sarah argued tiredly.

"Of course you can. But why go to all that effort when you can have your friends help you?"

Sarah smiled slightly at the sentiment. They laid in silence for a while, and Sarah thought that Lauren had fallen asleep, until she piped up sleepily.

"Do I get to meet him soon?"

"Who?" Sarah whispered.

"The cranky guy."

"Absolutely not."

"I'll take that as a maybe."

"Go to sleep, Lauren."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Several away, the man in question finally stumbled into his apartment around four o'clock that morning, dead on his feet but relatively uninjured. He'd had another unsuccessful night as far as tracking down Ronan went, although his frustration from his lack of leads had channeled nicely into some particularly satisfying takedowns of various lowlifes.

Matt was lucky that the next day was Saturday, and he was able to sleep pretty much the entire day away before finally waking up around seven in the evening. Feeling too tired to go to the boxing gym, he instead found himself heading over to the office to catch up on paperwork.

He'd been there for about an hour when the front door to the office opened and he heard Foggy's familiar voice come from the doorway.

"I knew I'd find you here. It's a _Saturday_ , Matt. The Lord's day of rest."

"That's Sunday, Foggy," Matt said, continuing to run his fingers over the Braille sheet he was reading.

"Well, I'm assuming you also won't be resting tomorrow, so my point still stands," Foggy said dismissively. "Is this what you've been doing all day?"

"No. First I slept for thirteen hours."

"God, you've gotten boring, Murdock."

Matt laughed and leaned back in his chair. "I was always boring. It's why I graduated with a higher GPA than you did."

"But think of all those Saturday nights you wasted _studying_. And now you're wasting even more Saturday nights holed up in an office going through case files."

"You're also at the office on a Saturday night," Matt pointed out.

"That's true," Foggy acknowledged. "But I'm only here looking for you. I wanted to talk to you about something, actually."

"Alright," Matt said, taking his glasses off and setting them on the desk. "What's up?"

Foggy flopped down in the chair across the desk from Matt. "What would you say about me asking Karen out for drinks sometime this week?"

Matt could hear Foggy's slightly nervous heartbeat and knew that he didn't mean the platonic kind of drinks. He feigned ignorance anyway. "I'd say…Josie's seems like a safe bet. She's only been there with us a million times."

"Right, but…this time I thinking I could maybe make it clearer that I'm asking her out as a…as a date."

Matt wet his lips before answering evenly. "I think that's great, Foggy. You've liked her since she started working here. You should go for it."

Foggy didn't seem convinced by his answer, and Matt could hear him fidgeting with the silver clip on his tie.

"It's pretty obvious that she liked you a lot for a while, there. Maybe she still does, for all I know. But I wasn't sure if you…" Foggy trailed off.

Matt shook his head. "I think Karen and I both understand that's not going to happen."

In truth, there had been a time when Matt thought maybe something _would_ happen between the two of them. It was after Claire had made clear that she wasn't interested in anything as dark as what he would undoubtedly bring into her life. He couldn't fault her for that, but the rejection had stung all the same. By contrast, there was Karen: sunny and innocent, who he enjoyed spending time with, and whose crush on Matt had been at times awkwardly obvious, even without his enhanced senses.

But any path towards a potential romance had been blocked by secrets—as it almost always went for Matt. This time, however, the secrets were on both ends. He kept his Daredevil identity a secret from her, and she was keeping something from him as well—something big. He had yet to pinpoint what it was, but it had slowly been changing Karen, making her more withdrawn and hard—traits that he recognized from his own secret-keeping over the years. Karen was entitled to her secrets, but the disappointment he felt at her reluctance to confide in him or Foggy only made it clearer how much it would hurt her to ever find out about his own big secret—and the pain would only be made worse if they were involved romantically.

"I…I couldn't be in a relationship with someone that I have to lie to so often," Matt said hesitantly. The topic of his dishonesty with Foggy was still a sore one between them, and he didn't want to start an argument. Luckily, the tense moment passed.

"So…if she says yes—which is definitely not a given—you'll, you know…be okay with that?"

"Absolutely," Matt assured him, before forcing himself to crack a grin. "Besides, this makes things easier. If she's dating you, we don't have to trick every guy she dates into stopping by the office so we can scare him into telling us his intentions."

Foggy laughed, finally relaxing somewhat.

"And I'm sure the ladies of Hell's Kitchen will be relieved to hear that Matt Murdock isn't about to be tied down to anyone anytime soon. Especially a couple of those paralegals," he said suggestively.

Matt smiled blandly, but didn't respond. He had honestly thought that Foggy would have already made the connection between Matt's supposed late nights with random women and his _actual_ late nights fighting crime. But unfortunately for Matt, it seemed as though his friend hadn't come to the realization until just now.

"Hang on…" Foggy began suspiciously, apparently tipped off by Matt's lack of confirmation. "All those nights that you let me believe you were sleeping with hot paralegals…were you out Daredeviling?"

Matt cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Well…I never actually _said_ I was sleeping with any of them. You just assumed."

"Matt! Sleeping with a hot paralegal is a sacred thing. You can't lie about that."

"Technically, I did go out with some of them," Matt argued. "In the beginning. But then it just got more time consuming and…injury inducing. I don't think a lot of girls are into giant bruises and poorly done stitches. So, I just kept using it as an excuse."

"Wait, so, when's the last time you _actually_ got laid?"

Matt leaned back in his chair and sighed in aggravation. He really didn't want to have this conversation right now—or ever, preferably.

Foggy leaned forward a bit and whispered in alarm, "Are you saying you haven't had sex since you started getting your illicit crime-fighting on? Matt, do you know how long that's _been_?"

"It hasn't been at the top of my priority list, Foggy," he said in annoyance. "I've kind of been busy trying to keep Hell's Kitchen from being overrun by criminals."

"Okay, and saving lives is great, yes, but you gotta wonder…is it worth it? I mean, you had no shortage of success playing the Handsome Blind Guy card in school—and now you could be playing the Handsome Blind _Lawyer_ card, and you're just letting it pass by!" Foggy sounded scandalized. "You should be disbarred for that."

"Yes, _that's_ what I would get disbarred for."

"Waste of perfectly good blindness," Foggy grumbled, and Matt chuckled.

"Some people might say that I'm doing the _opposite_ of wasting my blindness, you know," he reminded his friend pointedly.

Foggy just groaned and waved the statement away. "Well, Foggy Nelson is not some people, and I'm worried about your love life."

"I don't have time for a love life, Foggy," Matt said, trying to hide the frustration in his voice. "I need to focus on my work. Both in and out of the office. Things are getting serious at Orion, and that's on top of patrolling _and_ all of these new clients we have."

"Okay, fair point. But even the Devil of Hell's Kitchen needs to go out on a date occasionally, right? I'm not saying you need to _marry_ someone. But if I recall our law school days correctly—and it's possible that I don't, because there were copious amounts of alcohol involved—you weren't particularly adverse to one-night stands. The opposite of adverse, actually. In fact, one could be justified in saying you were excessively partial to one-night-stands—"

"I get it, Foggy."

"Plus, I think you underestimate how many girls would be into the Daredevil thing. I bet some of them would totally let you keep the mask on, if you're worried about potential identity exposure. I heard a few of the baristas at that coffee shop on 46th talking about you the other day. Something about being able to see your abs through your shirt. To be fair, most of those baristas were male, but the ladies who were listening looking pretty interested, too—"

"This isn't helping."

Foggy held his hands up in defeat. He sat there for a minute while Matt shuffled some of his papers around before speaking up again.

"And anyway, what do you mean, things are 'getting serious' at Orion? Things are looking up, buddy!"

Matt gave him a skeptical look, but Foggy continued before he could protest.

"I'm just saying. You and Sarah have both already gotten the sweet Jesus beaten out of you. Kids have gotten kidnapped, random criminals have been mysteriously murdered. You've kind of hit rock bottom, or something close to it. Which is a good thing!" Foggy insisted. "That means there's nowhere to go but up!"

"If you say so," Matt said, shaking his head.

"I do say so. I mean, it's not like things could really get worse, right?"

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Nearly a week later, things got remarkably worse.

Sarah was on the phone with her father, who she had been calling on a more regular basis to make up for the fact that she had been avoiding going to see him lately. Luckily, her bruises were starting to lighten and the cuts on her face were finally beginning to heal properly, so she hoped she'd look healthy enough soon to go visit him without causing too much alarm.

Mitch was having a particularly lucid day, which Sarah was sad to have missed experiencing in person. But their phone conversation was going well, and he was currently describing some sports game he had been watching earlier. Sarah didn't recognize most of the names or terms he was talking about, but she was happy to hear him sound excited about something all the same, and she interjected interestedly throughout his description.

"—and you know, a lot of people think that he's no good as a player, but really he's just not flashy. People these days expect all of their athletes to be celebrities—"

"Mhm," Sarah agreed, holding the phone between her shoulder and ear as she grabbed an apple out of the fridge. She was distracted from the conversation by a loud, forceful knock at the front door.

She set the apple down and padded over to the door while her father continued talking away on the other end of the line. When she glanced through the peephole, she was startled to see the dark blue uniform and silver badge of an NYPD officer on the other side.

"Uh, sorry, Dad, I gotta go," she interrupted Mitch. "I have…visitors. But I'll call you back later, okay?"

"That's fine, honey. Have fun with your friends. I'll see you soon, right?"

"Definitely," she told him distractedly, looking through the peephole again to make sure that she could see actual badges. "Okay, I'll talk to you later, Dad. Love you."

"Ma'am, this is NYPD. Open the door, please," an official sounding voice called from the other side.

Sarah hung up the phone and cautiously opened the door. There was a second officer standing behind the one who had been knocking, both of them with stern, serious looks on their faces.

"Good afternoon. I'm Officer Franks, this is my partner Officer Grant. Are you Sarah Corrigan?"

"Uh…yes, I am. Is something wrong?"

"Well, we aren't sure yet. Do you know a girl named…Hanh Ngo?" the officer asked, pronouncing the name stiltedly as he glanced down at the pad in his hand, before looking back up at her expectantly.

"No," Sarah said honestly, shaking her head. She didn't recognize the name. "Why?"

"Well, she's been in the hospital for an incident she was involved in recently at your place of work," he said. Sarah's stomach dropped as she realized who the girl in question was. She tried not to show her surprise on her face, but something in her expression it must have caught the officer's attention. "Seems like that's ringing a bit more of a bell?"

"I—I just heard about it at work the next day, is all. I didn't know that was her name," Sarah said quickly.

"No one did. She woke up yesterday, but it took us a while to get a Vietnamese translator in to speak to her. But she was very helpful in describing some of the people involved in her abduction. Most of them we already nailed for priors, but she did mention a white female employee, with dark hair, about your height and weight, who was there that night."

Sarah's heart was pounding, and she was suddenly grateful that for once she was speaking to someone who couldn't hear it. "I'm sorry, I don't really understand why you're talking to me about this? Orion is a huge company, there have to be a lot of—of women with dark hair there."

"That's very true. We're mostly here because a couple of employees at Orion suggested you might be the one to talk to, due to some unexplained injuries you sustained lately."

Sarah glanced over his shoulder and saw Mrs. Benedict peering out into the hallway through a crack in her door. She lowered her voice before responding.

"I was in a car accident," she said evenly.

"Okay. We can check on that, no problem. And we understand that even if you were there that night it doesn't mean that you were involved in what went down. We get that. But we'd like for you to come down to the station and answer a few questions for us. Just to clear this up. Shouldn't take long."

Sarah resisted the urge to bite her lip, not wanting to look nervous.

"O-of course. That's fine."

The ride down to the police station was tense, although not altogether as scary as it could have been. She had to ride in the back of the police car, but there were no lights or sirens, and the two cops in the front seat just conversed quietly with one another about some new Thai restaurant that was opening around the corner from the station. They barely seemed to remember she was there. She picked at a rip in the cheap vinyl seats the whole ride there, running through the entire night in her head as she tried to remember if there was any definite proof that she had been involved.

The cameras had all either been disabled or wiped, and it was unlikely that any of the men who had been there that night would care enough to come forward and testify that she had been there as well. For the most part, it seemed like it would be the girl’s word against her own; she hoped that would be enough.   
Once they got to the station, the officers who had fetched her from her apartment led her to a small room with a flimsy looking table in the center. She figured it was an interrogation room, but it lacked the large two-way mirror that she always saw in crime procedurals on television. In fact, she observed as she glanced around the room, there were no cameras either. Just four blank walls, a table, and some chairs. 

She’d been there for about ten minutes when two different police officers entered the room. One was tall, with sandy hair, and the other was slightly shorter and had a crooked nose. 

The sandy-haired cop let out a low whistle when he saw her, tapping his cheek with one finger, near the spot where she still had the remnants of a bruise on her own cheek. 

“Nasty bruise you got there. Looks like the skin is split, too. How’d you get it?”

Sarah held his gaze, trying to keep her breathing even and her face straight. 

“Car accident,” she said shortly. 

The cop exchanged a meaningful glance with his partner, who remained stationed near the door. Shaking his head, he took a seat in the chair on the opposite side of the table from her, leaning forward and fixing her with a serious gaze. 

“I’m going to be honest with you, here, Sarah. We don’t really _care_ all that much about who took that girl or why. I know, I know, that sounds harsh,” he said in response to her surprised look. “But she’s going to be fine. A lot of girls get taken in this city, especially ones like her: young, vulnerable, doesn’t speak English. We can’t possibly track them all down. At least this one made it out alive. So it’s not at the top of our priority list to find out who took her or why.”

Sarah frowned at the casual way he spoke about the subject, and at the confusing implication of what he’d just said. She glanced from the cop in front of her to the one standing near the door, but neither of them gave her any indication of what he was getting at. 

“So, if you don’t care about the girl…why am I here, then?”

“Well, she said something that caught our attention,” he began, and something in the tone of his voice made Sarah’s heart sink. “She was pretty confused about what was going on and who was where, generally. But she did seem to think that it was possible _you_ were interacting with someone interesting. I believe she described him as…‘a tall man in a black mask.’”

The cop shuffled through the papers in his hand, finally finding whatever he was looking for. Flipping the paper around to face Sarah, he held it up for her to observe. It was a grainy photograph of Daredevil, taken a few months ago; the one they had circulated in the news when those two cops had been murdered. 

“Now, maybe we’re jumping to conclusions here, but the description she gave sounded oddly familiar to us. And we are _really_ hoping you can maybe help us shed some light on that.” 

Sarah continued staring down at the blurry photo for a long moment, while the cop waited for her to respond. Finally, taking a deep breath, she sat up a little straighter and tucked her hair behind her ear before meeting the police officer’s eyes. 

“I think, um…I think I’d like to call my lawyer now.” 

Suddenly Sarah found herself grateful that Matt had given her his daytime phone, after all.


	14. Panic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! The bad times have arrived. We haven't had any angsty Matt POV for a little while, and that's always fun stuff to write, so I thought I'd throw some in for this chapter. You guys all seemed so happy that our two kids are starting to trust each other, but really, what's the fun in trust if it's never tested by horrible drama and pain?! Exactly.
> 
> Also, you guys might remember me mentioning that Britt Witt from FFN made some beautiful fan art for this story, for which the link can be found at the top of Chapter 12. And now Misery's-Toll (also on FFN) has created two amazing fan art drawings of a couple of scenes in Chapter 11! They can be found here:
> 
> http://miserystoll.tumblr.com/post/131394134104/suddenly-she-felt-a-strong-arm-snake-around-her
> 
> and
> 
> http://miserystoll.tumblr.com/post/131329349619/i-colored-it
> 
> Be sure to check her work out! I don't think anything has ever made me happier than the fact that people like this story enough to make fan art for it.

"So," the sandy haired cop said as they waited for Matt and Foggy to arrive. "I was thinking that to help pass the time, I might tell you a little bit about what kind of jail time we're potentially looking at here. Not for you, necessarily. But just for, you know…whoever it turns out is responsible for these things."

Sarah narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. He made her very uneasy; she couldn't recall if he had even told her his name. Neither he nor his partner with the crooked nose, still stationed near the door, were wearing any sort of identifying name tag.

"You're not supposed to talk to me until my lawyers get here," she said quietly.

"I'm not supposed to ask you any _questions_ ," he corrected her. "And you're not supposed to tell me anything. But I can talk. And you can listen, or not listen. It's up to you."

She didn't say anything.

"So, what's up first? Kidnapping! That's a minimum of five years right there, even if you only helped. Maximum of twenty-five, depending on the judge you get. Then there's assault, since she got hit with that tranquilizer dart," he continued, ticking off each crime on his fingers. "That's, what, seven years? Now, helping a vigilante…that one's tricky. We don't really have a set sentence for that, since, well, not that many people are stupid enough to do it. But I'd be willing to bet it's a hefty one, wouldn't you?"

"I thought you weren't supposed to ask me anything," she retorted, trying to keep her voice steady despite the horrible way her stomach was twisting.

"Good point," he conceded. "I retract the question. Moving on: I thought you might find it interesting that this actually isn't the first case involving your company that I've had to look into in the past couple of months. I was also assigned to look into the death of one Brian Yates. Nasty way of dying, that was. He worked at your company. You might have known him."

Sarah started to open her mouth to reply, but she was interrupted by a knock at the door. The crooked-nosed cop opened it and spoke briefly with another uniformed officer, who stepped aside to reveal Matt and Foggy. A wave of relief washed over her at the sight of the two of them.

"I sincerely hope you weren't talking to our client without her lawyers present, officer," Matt said coldly as they stepped into the room. He swept his white cane in front of him, using it to find the table.

Foggy set his briefcase down and shrugged, pulling out a chair to Sarah's right. "I don't know, I'm kind of hoping he was. When's the last time we got to press charges for improper detainment procedures? It sounds fun."

The cop leaned back in his chair, holding his hands up in mock defense and smirking at them. "Easy, guard dogs," he said. "I wasn't asking her anything. Just talking out loud to myself."

Matt hovered his hand around the chair to Sarah's left before finally finding it and pulling it out so he could take a seat. It was incredibly strange for Sarah to see him acting like that—like he didn't know exactly where every object in that room was.

The cop pointed between the two lawyers, looking amused. "Nelson and Murdock. Of course. That makes sense."

"How so?"

"You two were all mixed up with Fisk and Daredevil a few months back. Makes sense that you'd end up defending this one," he said, gesturing to Sarah, "and whatever involvement she has with the mask."

If Matt was at all unnerved by the mention of his alter ego, he didn't show it. His face was impassive, and his eyes were covered by the dark glasses that reflected the cop's pale face.

"I'm quite certain that Ms. Corrigan has _no_ involvement with Daredevil or any other wanted persons. And I'm unaware that you have any proof otherwise."

"We have the word of whats-her-face," the cop said dismissively. "The chink girl."

Sarah's eyebrows flew up, and it was apparent she wasn't the only one surprised by his callous words.

" _Wow._ Vague racism," Foggy piped up. "And not even for the correct ethnic group. Always the quickest way to get people to cooperate with you."

"I could care less what ethnicity she is. All I care about is her story. She's an eyewitness."

"I'd hardly call her an eyewitness," Matt said derisively. "She gave a vague description of something she thinks she saw while heavily under the influence of some very strong tranquilizers. And I'd be willing to bet that she was under the influence of pain killers while giving that statement, as well."

"Not to mention that all of this is being passed along through an interpreter," Foggy added. "We'd love to get a glance at his credentials. Maybe get a second translator in there, just to make sure it's all being deciphered correctly."

"I'm sure that will all be looked into once we have enough evidence to bring this to court."

"So even you admit that you don't have any evidence to have warranted dragging our client down here and interrogating her?"

"Let's not be dramatic," the cop sneered. "No one _dragged_ her down here. She came of her own free will, to answer a few questions. We're very appreciative of that. Especially given your family's sparkling reputation with the NYPD."

"I'm sorry," Foggy said. "Are vague character insinuations a verified police tactic now?"

"No one's trying to insinuate anything. I just mean, you know…you're Mitch Corrigan's daughter. That guy ended up in our drunk tank more times than I can count. And his criminal record…" The cop shook his head slowly and scanned over one of the papers in his folder. "Public drunkenness…participating in illegal gambling establishments…even a possession charge for marijuana back in the day. Do you think that it's hereditary? That inability to be a contributing member of society? Because if so, it looks like you've inherited it from both sides."

He held up another record, and she could barely make out the name _Anna Corrigan_ at the top. It looked like he was going to go more into detail, but Matt interrupted him, clearly unhappy with the direction of the conversation.

"Are we here to talk about family trees, or to discuss why you're still questioning Ms. Corrigan with nowhere near enough evidence to arrest her?"

"No one said anything about arresting her."

"Then why is she here?"

"I told you. Just to answer a few questions. For instance, questions like this one," he said, turning to Sarah and lacing his fingers together. "Do you know what happens to people deemed mentally unfit when their caretakers get sent to prison?"

A brief silence fell over the room at the sudden redirection. Sarah felt her stomach grow heavy with trepidation.

"Excuse me?" she said slowly.

"People who cannot legally be expected to take care of themselves," the cop explained slowly, despite clearly knowing that Sarah hadn't been asking for elaboration. "Do you know what happens to them when the person who takes care of them goes off to prison? They're put in care of the state. And let me tell you, state care facilities? Not the best. Not by a long shot. Kind of dirty, not great food. Incredibly subpar medical staff, that's for sure. Really, not all that different from prison."

A strangely familiar crushing feeling began gathering in Sarah's chest with every word the cop spoke, like a hand was squeezing her lungs every time she tried to inhale.

"This isn't even the tiniest bit relevant to what you brought her here for—" Foggy started to argue.

"—my dad has never been declared mentally unfit," Sarah interrupted, not taking her eyes off of the sandy haired cop's.

He shrugged and leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand. "Doesn't mean he couldn't be."

The crushing feeling grew, accompanied by a sudden feeling of lightheadedness.

"Is that supposed to be a threat?" she demanded shakily.

"Sarah, don't say anything else," Matt said quietly.

She struggled to breathe in fully, and was dismayed to feel a slight tingling sensation in her arms and legs. Wasn't that a sign of something bad? Like a stroke. Or a heart attack. _Do people usually have heart attacks in their twenties?_ she thought irrationally.

"We'd like a few minutes alone with our client, please," Matt said suddenly. Technically it was a request, but it was clear that he expected them to comply. The cop sitting at the table glanced over his shoulder at his partner, then turned to them and shrugged carelessly.

"Sure. If it'll make you feel better, go ahead. We'll be back in a bit."

As the door closed behind the two officers, Foggy immediately turned to Matt.

"Is it just me, or is this questioning session all over the place? They said they were going to ask her about the girl at Orion and they've barely even touched on the subject. Hell, they barely even brought up the whole Daredevil thing."

Sarah stayed silent, trying not to think about the constricting feeling in her lungs. Hearing how suspicious Foggy was of the whole situation didn't help. She balled her hands up, feeling her fingernails dig into her own already injured palms.

"Sarah?" Matt said. She didn't respond. Foggy didn't seem to notice.

"Something's up here, Matt," he continued. "Starting with whatever the hell this room is. I've never seen an interrogation room with no windows, no mirrors, and no cameras. What is this, the Gitmo of Hell's Kitchen?"

Sarah whipped her head around to look at him in alarm.

"Foggy—" Matt warned.

"Uh—I didn't mean Gitmo," Foggy corrected himself quickly, catching sight of the panicked look on Sarah's face. "Not—not Gitmo like with the—the torture, or—" he stuttered off, looking at Matt for help.

A strong dizzy sensation hit her, and she leaned forward, resting both elbows on the table and pressing her palms to her eyes as she waited for it to pass. But it didn't.

"Sarah?" she heard Matt's calm voice say somewhere near her ear. "What's happening?"

"I'm fine," she mumbled. "Just need a second."

Matt leaned back in his chair so that he could talk to Foggy behind her, speaking quickly and lowly.

"Foggy. Go find her some water," she heard Matt murmur to his partner. "Make sure the cops don't come in here. The last thing we need is for them to see her like this."

He probably hadn't intended for her to hear him, but his words made her chest tighten in panic even more. If the police saw her reacting like this, there would be no doubt in their minds that she was guilty. The sound of her heart racing was almost deafening even in her own ears; this must be what Matt felt like all the time.

She heard the door close behind Foggy, leaving her and Matt alone at the table. Then the sound of metal scraping the concrete floor as Matt turned his chair in her direction, causing her to look up. He reached around and grasped the side of her chair, then slowly rotated it around so that she was facing him, keeping her balanced on the chair with his other hand. He slid forward slightly in his seat, so that his knees were on either side of hers, and his hands were on the metal arm rests of her chair.

"Hey. Listen to me."

Sarah was too disoriented to be caught off guard by this sudden proximity, as she normally would be. Without thinking, she found herself reaching out and grabbing his forearm, digging her fingers into the fabric of his suit. If her nails were hurting him through the cloth, he showed no indication.

"Sarah. Breathe," he ordered, speaking very quietly but firmly. "You're alright."

She nodded frantically, but the command to breathe was easier said than done, especially when it felt like she could only expand her lungs halfway. Why couldn't she make this stop? She was in the middle of a police station interrogation room, for god's sake. This was the last place she needed to be having a panic attack.

"They're just trying to scare you because they don't have anything on you. Don't let them get in your head."

Too late. His words weren't helping, so instead she just tried to focus on the sound of his voice, that very specific cadence he had. Anything other than the sound of her own erratic heartbeat in her ears. Her whole body felt chilled, even though she knew somewhere in the back of her brain that the room wasn't actually cold. Despite that, her hands and feet began to feel slightly numb, like she had dunked them in ice water.

She closed her eyes as he continued speaking. She wasn't listening to what he was saying, but she thought maybe he was asking her something. His words were muffled by a rushing sound in her ears.

Sarah felt Matt lean away from her, and a few seconds later something warm and heavy was draped over her shoulders. Her eyes flew open and she looked down in bewilderment to see Matt's suit jacket wrapped around her. He was frowning, apparently alarmed by her violent shivering. She opened her mouth, intending to thank him, but what came out was entirely different.

"I still have your sweatshirt," she blurted out. She had no idea why she had to tell him that right now, of all times.

Matt's looked briefly confused, then his mouth quirked up slightly. "That's okay. I have others."

Sarah leaned forward and buried her face in her hands.

"They're going to arrest me," she said, her voice so muffled by her hands that no one without enhanced hearing could understand her. "They're going to send me to prison and they'll send my dad to old person prison and I'll never get to see him again and I can't _breathe_."

"That's not true," Matt countered firmly. "You and your dad will be fine. And you can breathe, you _are_ breathing, you just need to slow down."

He was wrong. She _couldn't_ breathe, there just wasn't enough air in the small, dirty room.

"I think—I think I want to leave," she said, sitting up suddenly. "Can I leave? Are they k-keeping me here?"

She moved to stand up, but Matt predicted her actions and quickly slid his hands off the chair to grab hold of her arms, keeping her in her chair. His grip wasn't very tight, but she didn't bother trying to break away.

"I don't think that's a good idea," Matt said immediately.

"Why not?" she said desperately. Some part of her brain, the reasonable part currently being drowned out by the panic in her veins, knew perfectly well why she couldn't leave, but for the life of her she couldn't remember why.

"Listen to me," Matt said, his voice low and calm. "They're not detaining you. You aren't under arrest. But if you go rushing out of here, you're going to look guilty no matter what. It will make things worse."

Of course. She knew that. And she knew that she knew that, but something deep in her chest still frantically wanted to be out of that tiny room. She tried to block it out.

"Right. I know," she said, closing her eyes and shaking her head violently. "I know that. I'm sorry. _Shit_."

"I'm not going to let you go to jail, Sarah," Matt said softly. "And I won't let them take your dad anywhere, either. Okay? We're good lawyers. Well, Foggy is. I'm decent."

She exhaled in a short laugh, still struggling to breathe normally. But the dizziness had faded, and the feeling was slowly returning to her limbs.

The door opened suddenly, and Sarah jumped. But it was just Foggy, carrying a bottle of water in his hand. He raised his eyebrows a fraction at the sight of the two of them, but made no comment on it.

"Sorry," he said as he handed the water bottle to Sarah. "This vending machine was broken so I had to go find one that worked. Are you…better now?"

Sarah nodded, embarrassed by how badly she had just freaked out. She was still shaky, and didn't feel like she could fully breathe in. But she didn't feel like she was dying, which was an improvement.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm good," she muttered, shrugging Matt's jacket off and handing it back to him. "I'm sorry. I can't really…" she trailed off, suddenly feeling extremely exhausted. "I'm sorry."

Matt wordlessly moved his chair back to its original position, and she followed suit.

"It's no big deal," Foggy said kindly, while Matt slipped his suit jacket back on. "I'm just glad you're calmed down now because they're probably going to come back in here in about—"

He was cut off by the timely re-entrance of the two police officers.

"—right this second," he finished, spinning on the spot to face the two cops. "Welcome back, officers."

They ignored his greeting. The cop who had been questioning Sarah looked past Foggy, letting his eyes fall on her.

"You're shaking a bit, there," he noted with a hint of a smirk. "Cold?"

Sarah opened her mouth to respond, but it was Foggy who spoke up quicker, smacking his hand down on the table indignantly and then pointing accusatorily at the two officers.

"I should say so! It is _freezing_ in here, gentlemen! Are you purposely trying to make our client uncomfortable?"

The cops exchanged a confused look.

"It's like seventy five degrees in here," the crooked-nosed one said.

"Seventy three, maybe," Foggy countered. "At the _most_. And I think seventy eight is generally considered the acceptable setting for room temperature, so unless you'd like us to file a complaint with the department for neglect—"

"You've gotta be kidding me," the sandy-haired cop said doubtfully.

Foggy turned to Matt. "If we all get pneumonia from these sub-arctic temperatures, can we sue them, probably?"

"Most definitely," Matt responded casually.

"Christ, alright, alright. I'll go change the thermostat," the cop grumbled, holding his hands up. He rolled his eyes and yanked the door closed behind him. Just before it shut, Sarah swore she heard him mutter to himself about insufferable lawyers. Now they were left with the other cop, who so far hadn't spoken much.

Moving away from the door, he smiled at them sympathetically before taking a seat in the now empty chair.

"I apologize for my colleague," he said. "He's just had a long shift today. I'm Officer McDermott. You can call me Aaron, if you like."

Sarah was immediately suspicious that he introduced himself by his first name; the other cop hadn't even bothered to give any name. She could tell by the way Matt tensed slightly next to her that he had picked up on the difference, too. It felt oddly like a trap.

"Officer McDermott, do you mind telling me why you're partner decided to start harassing Ms. Corrigan over matters that have nothing to do with the subject he was supposed to be questioning her about?"

Matt's voice was surprisingly quiet, but authoritative. Like he expected the officer to lean in to listen to him, which Aaron did. There was a deadly calm to his voice that Sarah recognized, and had he been using that tone on her, she'd probably have been headed for the door. But seeing that intimidation aimed at someone else for once was oddly satisfying.

"I wouldn't say that it was completely irrelevant subject matter," Aaron said amiably. "But I understand that maybe it was upsetting. That definitely wasn't our intention. And I'm sorry about that."

He turned his attention to Sarah at the end of his sentence, apologizing directly to her. She didn't respond.

"In fact," he continued, starting to gather the papers and folders his partner had left on the table, "I don't see any reason to keep you here if you're uncomfortable. We appreciate you coming down and chatting with us."

Sarah exchanged a confused look with Foggy, thrown by the abrupt change.

"You guys have a great evening," Aaron said. And with that, he swiftly exited the room, leaving a dumbstruck Sarah and two similarly puzzled lawyers behind.

"What just happened?" she said finally.

"I have no idea, beyond the fact that was just about the most painfully obvious performance of 'Good Cop, Bad Cop' I've ever seen," Foggy said.

"I don't…get it," Sarah said slowly, looking from Matt to Foggy and back. "That's it? They—they said they were bringing me here to ask me questions and then they barely asked me any. And they bring up all of these things they want to arrest me for but they don't arrest me. I don't understand. What the hell is going on?"

The two lawyers gave her grim looks, which didn't help to make her feel any better.

"My guess is, whatever's going is possibly not strictly aboveboard…law-wise," Foggy told her. "Maybe something they haven't cleared with the higher-ups. Which could be a good thing! If they're being shady, it will undermine any case they try to bring against you."

"On the other hand, if they're not following police procedure, it makes them harder to predict," Matt added.

Neither guess was comforting. Sarah remained quiet, her mind racing, as Matt and Foggy led her out of the station.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The next night, shortly after six thirty, Sarah was just clearing off the table after dinner with her father. It had been a pleasant meal overall, despite the slight tension on Sarah's end as she tried not to comment on the condition of the house. Newspapers were stacked high on every surface, and the dishes clearly hadn't been done in a while. Dust was beginning to gather thickly on the television and bookshelves. Nothing disastrous, but enough of a decline to be noticeable.

"You're taking some of that casserole home with you, right?" Mitch asked as she set the dishes on the counter.

"Yeah, I'll take a little bit."

"Take all of it."

She shot him a suspicious look. "What, you don't like my casserole anymore?"

"I love your casserole. But I'd also love to see you eat a bit more. You're so thin."

"I'll take half," she conceded.

Sarah's phone buzzed with a new text message, and she was surprised to see that it was from Matt. _I guess he really can text_ , she thought.

It was a short, simple message: _Are you home?_

_No_ , she replied. _I'm at my dad's. I'll be home later tonight. Why?_

_I'm working late at the office. Thought I'd stop by your place after to talk about a couple of things._

She was disrupted from their conversation by a small shattering noise. Looking up from the screen, she saw her dad standing by the counter, a bewildered look on his face and blood running down his hand. A broken glass lay in a puddle of water on the counter.

"Oh my God!" she exclaimed, shoving her phone into her pocket and hurrying over to the other side of the kitchen.

"I'm sorry—" Mitch stammered, looking around confusedly. "I—I didn't…I was just trying to set the glass down."

Sarah quickly grabbed his uninjured hand, leading him over to the kitchen sink. She turned the tap on and stuck her hand underneath to make sure it wasn't too hot.

"Here, dad, put your hand under here," she said, gesturing to the stream of water. He did.

"It didn't look like the counter was that close," he muttered in distress.

"I know. I know. It's alright." Sarah inspected the cut on his hand; it was long, running down his thumb, but it was shallow. "I think you'll be alright with a couple of Band-Aids."

"We can't really afford much more than that, can we?" he asked her jokingly as she reached under the counter for the small first-aid kit underneath.

She gave him a weak smile. _You have no idea._

"No, we can't," she said.

"You said that cab service is paying for your medical bill for all the injuries you have, right?" he asked her worriedly. "Since it was their fault the driver got into a car accident while carrying a passenger?"

Sarah nodded tightly, hating the idea of telling her father even more lies. "Yep. They're—they're paying for everything."

"Good. That's irresponsible driving, that is," he said firmly. "I hope they let that cab driver go. I can't believe I didn't see it on the news. I watch every day, you know."

"Do you?" she asked idly while dabbing alcohol on the cut.

"I do. It helps me keep up with what day of the week it is. Did you have to get a lawyer to make them pay for your medical bills?"

"Um…yeah," she said distractedly, not really listening as she applied a small bandage.

"That seems expensive. Could you afford it alright?"

Sarah pursed her lips and shrugged, not wanting to continue the conversation with more lies.

"It's fine. It's not like money and legal problems are new for this family, right?"

Mitch looked at her sadly. "Yeah, they, uh…they never did send me a Father of the Year Award, did they?"

Sarah felt a sting of guilt. "No, Dad, that's not what I…" She sighed. "I'm sorry, that's not what I meant. I'm just—I'm really stressed out right now. I didn't mean it that way."

Her father reached out to touch her face, looking concerned. "Why are you always so stressed nowadays, honey? Is it work? Are you not getting hired for enough jobs?"

She shook her head. "No. No, work is fine. It's been…pretty uneventful, actually."

Surprisingly, it wasn't a lie. She had been in her new position for a week now, and she had yet to do much beyond what her old duties as Ronan's secretary had been. The only difference was that Jason occasionally sent her out on very tedious but oddly specific errands. Nothing illegal, or even immoral; just strangely detailed. Sometimes he requested that she make several stops—the printer, the coffee shop, the bank—in a particular order that forced her to zig-zag across town, despite the fact that there was a much more logical way for her to go. He'd ask to see the receipts afterwards, and she had caught him checking the time stamps to make sure she'd gone in the order he had specified.

The whole thing was oddly tense, given how mundane her new work was. She felt like she was being watched all the time, as though Jason were testing her ability to follow odd directions without complaining. It was unsettling, but it was nothing compared to the gnawing anxiety in her stomach as she imagined what would happen if Jason—or anyone at Orion—found out about the police bringing her in. She was certain it would only be a matter of time.

"Well, then what is it?"

Sarah snapped back to attention. "What?"

"What's stressing you out so badly?"

"Oh. Nothing, I just…" she trailed off, unable to think of anything.

"Have a lot on your mind?" Mitch finished for her helpfully. "I have the opposite problem."

"Dad," she chided gently, but she smiled faintly at him all the same. The smile faded when she let her gaze fall on his newly bandaged hand, similar to how her own had looked a few days prior. She did have a lot on her mind, and the rapid decline in her father's health was at the top of the list.

Remembering the conversation she had just been having over text, Sarah pulled her phone out to respond. She hadn't expected Matt to actually ever text her; wasn't he the one who had told her not to even use the number unless she had to? But things seemed to be changing, oddly enough. Whatever alliance they had formed was fragile and unorthodox one, but light-years better than where they used to be.

It was one less thing for her to worry about, at least.

A short while later, Sarah was back in her own apartment, squinting at the tiny text on the glowing screen of her laptop. She had a dozen tabs open in her browser: in-home nurses, care facilities, insurance estimates. She'd been sorting through all of it for about two hours, and none of it was proving to be helpful.

There was no denying that her father was getting worse and worse, and she didn't know how much longer he could safely live alone. The obvious solution was for her to move in and take care of him. But how long until he found out that she wasn't a pianist anymore? That she had taken on his debt, which he would never have wanted her to do? How long until he came across one of her nighttime meetings with the masked Devil of Hell's Kitchen? Or until Ronan caught up with her, or Jason sent people after her, and her father got caught in the crossfire?

Sarah groaned and put her head in her hands, pressing her palms to her itching eyes. Her head was pounding, and she hadn't gotten a good nights sleep in…who really knew how long? In a desperate grab for more caffeine, she had chosen to make coffee tonight instead of her usual tea, despite the fact that the drink often made her jittery and her coffee machine barely worked.

As though it could hear her negative thoughts, the coffee maker started making an odd spluttering noise. She warily approached the machine, waiting for it to explode and spray boiling water everywhere. Instead it just continued gurgling half-heartedly as a weak stream of watery looking liquid made its way into the pot. Sarah made a face and shook the machine slightly, hoping it would start working properly again. She whacked the top of it with her open palm, and the liquid changed to a color that more closely resembled coffee.

"Stupid machine," she grumbled. "You have one job to do."

Sarah jumped slightly as she heard a knock at the front door, then glanced at the clock: it was a quarter to eight. She'd almost forgotten that Matt had said he was coming over to talk about something to do with the entire police ordeal. Leaving the misbehaving coffee machine behind her, she made her way over to the door, glancing through the peep hole before she opened it.

Matt made a face as he stepped into the apartment and set his cane aside. "Why does it smell like burning plastic in here?"

"I'm making coffee," she explained tiredly. Matt gave her a confused look, but she didn't notice. "Do you want some?"

Matt looked doubtful. "Uh…no. Thank you."

She shrugged and made her way back over to the coffee maker. The pot was half-full of something that looked vaguely coffee-like, so she turned the malfunctioning machine off and poured the liquid into a mug.

"You were at your dad's place tonight?"

"Yeah," Sarah said, taking a sip of the coffee. It was hot and tasted awful. She made a face and set the mug down on the dining room table while she waited for it to cool down a bit (and perhaps magically taste better).

"Was everything normal?"

She knew Matt was referring to the possibility of there being hired men lurking around. But involuntarily her mind wandered to the decaying state of the house and the disturbingly rapid decline in her father's health, neither of which felt particularly normal. She looked down at her laptop screen, which still displayed several highly priced in-home nursing facilities that she would never be able to afford.

"…Sarah?"

"Yeah," she said abruptly, reaching out and closing the laptop lid firmly. "Everything was…fine."

Matt frowned and knitted his eyebrows together, clearly not believing her. She changed the subject before he could ask anything else.

"So, have you and Foggy figured anything out?" she asked. "About what's going on with the police?"

Matt waited a beat before answering, as thought debating whether to go along with the abrupt change of topic. "Kind of. I talked to a friend of mine. He's a sergeant at the precinct."

Sarah gave him an odd look. "You have a friend that's a cop?"

"Well, he's more Foggy's friend than mine. But we get along alright," Matt said. "Why?"

"I just…wouldn't have expected it is all," she said, then tilted her head thoughtfully. "A vigilante and a cop who are friends. It's like the Fox and the Hound, or something."

"The...cartoon animals," Matt clarified doubtfully.

"Yeah. But, like, if they were scarier. And also people," she tried to explain. Then she shook her head, closing her eyes pinching the bridge of her nose tiredly. Clearly, she really did need some sleep. "I have no idea why I'm still talking about this. I'm sorry. What did your cop friend say?"

She was fairly certain that Matt had been silently laughing at her, but when she looked back up at him his face was as serious as usual.

"Nothing very comforting, although it confirmed some of our suspicions. He has no idea what's going on. Said that he doesn't know of anything out of the ordinary about the two cops that interviewed you, but that the room they held you in is usually just where they hold any drunks who are too rowdy for the drunk tank. It's not meant as an interrogation room."

'Nothing very comforting' seemed like an understatement to her.

"So…what does that mean? Why'd they bring me down there and try to scare me, and then just…let us leave?"

"I'm not sure," Matt admitted. "I think Foggy was right when he said whatever they're doing is something they don't necessarily want their superiors knowing about."

"Is there…I mean, is there any chance they're working with Orion, somehow?" she asked uncertainly.

"It's always possible. I need to check them out and see if—"

Matt stopped speaking suddenly, turning his head in the direction of the hall. Sarah followed his gaze, straining her ears to pick up on whatever he was hearing. She couldn't.

"What's going on?" she asked worriedly.

He didn't answer right away, still concentrating on whatever was catching his attention. "Speak of the devil. One of the cops from earlier. Officer McDermott. He's coming up the stairs."

Sarah's eyes widened. "What? Why? Is he coming to arrest me?"

Matt paused, then shook his head. "I don't think so. He's not in uniform. Not even armed."

Sarah threw a nervous look at the front door, as though she, too, would be able to sense the approaching cop through it. She bit her lip as her mind raced. Why would he be coming here if not to arrest her, and not to attack her? Whatever he was here to do, he hadn't wanted to do it while in the police station, surrounded by lawyers.

"Go hide in the bedroom," she said suddenly, turning to Matt.

Matt raised his eyebrows in disbelief. "What?"

"There's got to be a reason he's here off-duty, at my apartment, where he thinks my lawyers aren't around. This is how we find out what's going on."

"Or this is how he tries to kill you."'

"You said yourself he's not armed," Sarah argued. "And if he was here to attack me, I doubt he's going to stop because my lawyer is around. You can't exactly go all vigilante on him while you're not in costume, can you?"

There were a few seconds of silence during which Matt was either thinking or listening to the cop coming closer; she wasn't sure which.

"I don't like it," he said finally.

"Me either. But whatever he's going to say, he's not going to say it in front of you. I need to talk to him if I'm ever going to find out what they're planning."

A loud knock came at the door. Sarah waited for a moment to see if Matt was going to listen to her. With a reluctant frown, he did, disappearing into her darkened bedroom and closing the door behind him.

Sarah nervously opened the front door, where the officer from earlier—the one who had introduced himself as Aaron—smiled brightly in greeting.

"Hi."

"…hi," she said hesitantly.

He seemed to pick up on her suspicion. "I know you're probably surprised to see me here. And I hope I'm not interrupting anything. I just wanted to come in and talk to you for a minute, if that's alright. Off the record."

The situation was so obviously suspect, and had Matt not been in the next room she would have shut the door without another word. But he was, and her curiosity was killing her, so Sarah nodded in agreement, then stepped aside to allow him into the apartment.

"I'm sure you can guess why I'm here," Aaron said once the door was closed behind him.

Sarah shook her head. "No. Not…not really."

"I wanted to talk to you again. About the vigilante."

"I told you guys that I don't know anything about him. I've never even met him," she said. _Not true. He's standing in my bedroom right now._

"I understand that. No accusations here. I just want to talk. Maybe let you in on a few things you might not know about him. Can we sit?" Aaron asked, gesturing towards the dining room table.

Sarah shrugged. "Uh…sure, I guess."

They settled into chairs on opposite sides of the small table.

"First of all, I need be honest with you. I'm not one hundred percent unbiased on this," Aaron confessed.

Sarah licked her lips nervously. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I've had my own run-ins with this guy. Not pleasant ones. You know, my nose didn't always look like this," he said, pointing at his crooked nose with a wry grin. "Got my nose broken in two places, just for doing my job and trying to bring him in one night. My partner got a nasty concussion from that same scuffle; he's lucky he didn't have brain damage, the way Daredevil slammed him into the ground."

Sarah bit back a frown. Matt hadn't mentioned that he'd ever gotten into an altercation with one of the cops interviewing her. Was he hiding it from her, or had he just brawled with so many of them that he didn't recall?

"Your partner seemed fine when he was talking to me yesterday," Sarah said.

Aaron shook his head. "He's not my partner. I'm just assigned to him until my regular partner gets the okay from our medical department to get back on active duty." He leaned closer, as though he was telling her a secret. "You know, some people think that Daredevil only goes after crooked cops. At least, that's how the media painted it after Fisk's guys got caught. But really, he'll go after just about anyone that gets in his way. And as much as you might not want to admit it, if you are mixed up with him…at some point that will include you."

"I'm sure that's true," Sarah said, keeping her voice carefully even. "But I can't think of any reason why he'd ever be mixed up with me. I'm just a secretary."

"Right, of course not," Aaron said quickly, adopting a mollifying tone. "But hypothetically, if you had ever run into him…maybe he's convinced you that he's just trying to help. Trying to do the right thing. But he's not. If he were, he would be a cop. Or a firefighter, or a soldier. _Real_ heroes. Not cowards running around in masks. No matter what he's told you, this man is dangerous. Unstable. Violent."

Sarah couldn't imagine considering Matt of all people a coward, but she also couldn't argue with the last part. He was dangerous, unstable, and violent.

"I know," she said automatically.

Aaron seemed encouraged by her agreement, despite the fact that it didn't divulge anything. Her heart sank, and he leaned forward in his chair almost excitedly.

"If you _did_ have something to tell us…you wouldn't be charged with anything. Any good lawyer would be able to get you a plea bargain in exchange for turning in Daredevil. Who are those ones you have? Nelson and Murdock? They could get you off easy on a case like this."

Somehow Sarah didn't think Matt and Foggy would be much help as her defense lawyers if she were to go to court against Daredevil. Aaron seemed to interpret her doubtful frown as misgivings over her representation.

"Or, I mean, hell, you wouldn't even really need a lawyer. The DA would be _that_ grateful for the information. And if it did go to trial, any judge would understand. If this vigilante threatened you, if he's hurting you…no one can blame you for doing what he says."

"He's not doing any of those things, because I've never _met_ him," she repeated.

"Listen, the bruises that you have? I see injuries like that on women all the time. I know what they mean. You don't get them from a car accident. You get them from someone bigger than you, and angrier than you."

Images of Ronan flashed into her mind, and she swallowed hard.

"Or you get them from a car accident."

"And what borough did you say that car accident happened in again?"

Sarah's stomach twisted. Clearly he was going to check the police records to see if she really had been in a crash.

"I didn't. It was across the bridge," she lied. "In Newark."

She hoped that a fake car accident in a different state would be more difficult to check up on, and from the slightly disappointed look on Aaron's face she assumed she was correct.

Shaking his head, he set a folder down on the table in front of him. She hadn't noticed him holding it before.

"Right. Okay, I think maybe you should take a look at some of these photos. Is that okay?"

Sarah gave a half shrug and Aaron flipped the folder over to show a photo of a man with gauze wrapped around his head who was hooked up to several IVs.

"This guy here? In the hospital bed? He got thrown off a roof by Daredevil. When they brought him into the hospital, he'd been stabbed right here," he said, and tapped his forehead just below his eyebrow. "That's a major nerve. You don't generally hit that by accident. You find it on purpose, when you're trying to make someone suffer."

Sarah tried to keep her face expressionless as she looked down at the photo. Of course, she'd already known about Matt throwing that Russian off the roof. She also knew that the man was involved in a child-trafficking ring. But that didn't meant that the physical evidence of what Matt had done to him didn't make her feel slightly nauseous.

Aaron put another photo down on the table. It was another man in a hospital bed, with both of his arms in casts and several vivid bruises on his face. One eye was swollen shut.

"This one? He said Daredevil broke his left arm and hand in _four different places_. Then he moved on to the other one. Broke it twice before the guy finally told him whatever it was he wanted to know. He did this just for _information_."

Sarah grimaced at the photo, forcing herself to keep looking even though she desperately wanted to avert her eyes. But she didn't want to look suspicious, so instead she just looked at the picture and reminded herself that whoever the man was, he had to be someone awful for Matt to have done that to him. He had to be.

Aaron seemed disappointed that the photos weren't having a greater effect on her. He had no idea that her heart was racing and her palms were sweating. He rifled through the photos until he came to one near the back, throwing it down on the table.

"I know you heard about this last one. It's still a topic of debate in the news over who did it: Fisk or Daredevil. But I gotta say, the fact that they found a black mask near the body is pretty damning."

Sarah knew what the photo would be before she saw it. But much like driving past a gruesome car crash, it was difficult not to look. As soon as she did let her gaze fall to the photo, she wished she hadn't. She closed her eyes so she didn't have to look at the bloody, headless body in the picture. It occurred to her briefly that it clearly wasn't a police scene photo like the others, and she wondered how he'd even gotten it.

"Anatoly Ranskahov. Did you know that his head wasn't actually cut off, like the news said? It was smashed to bits. Literally just crushed into nothing with some sort of blunt object. Now, by all accounts, Wilson Fisk is a bad guy, but he's also an awkward loner. Good at planning evil deeds, but nothing anyone has said about him has ever indicated that he'd personally be capable of doing something like this. So I guess the question is, can you think of anyone else who's shown that kind of blind rage, and the physical strength to follow through with it?"

Sarah could think of someone. He was currently standing in her bedroom, listening to this whole conversation. She knew—she was almost certain—that Matt hadn't killed that man. But the lingering, tiny possibility of it made her stomach turn even more.

Aaron watched her closely, waiting for her to—what? Come clean about everything? He closed the folder—to her relief—before leaning forward and speaking earnestly.

"That masked maniac has hurt every person who's gotten in the way of something he wanted. Tortured them, put them in comas. I know that right now it might seem like he's on your side, but the moment that you come between him and his grand goals, the moment he stops seeing you as a friend and starts seeing you as a threat…what do you think will happen to you, Sarah?"

There was a moment's silence as, to her horror, her brain began considering the different possibilities that answered his question.

"I'm—I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head to clear the disturbing thoughts away. "If I could help you, I would. I just…I'm not involved in this. I never was."

Aaron nodded slowly, then sighed and reached inside his jacket. For a split second, Sarah thought maybe he was reaching for his gun, but instead he pulled out a thick envelope and placed it on the table between them, sliding it towards her.

She looked down at it, but didn't pick it up. "What is this?"

"This is the last card I have left to play. It's not strictly condoned by the department, but…sometimes when you're dealing with someone who circumvents the law, you have to take similar action." There was a new shine in Aaron's eyes as he continued speaking, a sort of total confidence that whatever was in that envelope would be the ticket to getting her to talk. "Daredevil has _royally_ pissed off several very influential individuals and organizations in Hell's Kitchen with the damage he's been doing. A few of them have pitched in to offer a very handsome reward for anyone who can provide information that leads to his capture."

Sarah blinked in surprise as she looked from the envelope to Aaron, still not reaching for it.

He nodded his head toward the packet encouragingly. "Go on. Take a look."

She hoped he didn't notice the slight shake in her hands as she slowly picked up the envelope and lifted the flap. There were two thick stack of bills inside, with a band around each of them that clearly marked them as $10,000 each. She looked back up at him speechlessly.

"Now, obviously that's not the entire reward," Aaron hastened, as though twenty grand was a sum that she would scoff at. "That's more of a…motivation. For you to take a day or two, search your memory for any information that might help us. The amount of the actual reward is written on the back of the envelope."

Sarah flipped the envelope over and exhaled sharply at the number written on it. The $20,000 inside the envelope was a small fraction of what was actually being offered. _Holy shit._

"The rest would be in cash as well, if that's a concern."

Sarah tore her eyes away from the zeros on the paper and looked back up at Aaron. He had a small, smug smile on his face, like he was certain he had finally convinced her.

"I…" she trailed off, still slightly in shock from the speech he had given her earlier, now amplified by the large sum of money in her hand. "I, um…I don't—"

"Just think about it," he interrupted her, suddenly standing. He clearly wanted to exit the apartment before she could turn down the offer. He withdrew a business card from his jacket pocket, setting it down carefully on the table. "Take the rest of the weekend to mull it over, huh? How about you give me a call or stop by my office by…Monday night?"

He held his hand out for her to shake, and she reluctantly stood up. When she took his hand, he gave her an oddly sympathetic smile.

"You seem like a nice girl who knows how to do the right thing," he said. "I hope to see you in the station because you're collecting your reward on Monday night. Not because you're in handcuffs."

It was painfully clear from his words that those were the only two options.

Sarah stood there in shock as the door closed behind the officer. She looked down at the envelope in her hand, which held the easy ticket out of every problem she had. The figure written on that envelope was big. Enough money for her and her father to completely disappear from Orion's radar, and start a new life somewhere. Somewhere with a job she didn't hate, and no violent coworkers watching her all the time. It could easily buy the highest quality medical care available for her father, plus some.

For a moment, she let her gaze wander around the apartment: the laptop full of confusing and unhelpful medical websites; the stack of overdue utility and medical bills on her counter; the first aid kit that was never meant to be for more than papercuts; the folder full of photos she wished she hadn't seen. And finally: the white and red cane leaning against the wall in the corner, which brought her back to reality.

The floorboard creaked near her bedroom, and she slowly turned to see Matt standing in the doorway, an unreadable look on his face. Her stomach dropped.

Aaron's words returned, unwelcome, to echo in Sarah's head as she and Matt stood silently on opposite ends of the room:

_"…the moment that you come between him and something he wants, the moment he stops seeing you as a friend and starts seeing you as a threat…what do you think will happen to you?"_

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

As Sarah and Aaron talked in the living room, Matt remained just out of sight in the bedroom, and the ringing in his ears was getting louder with every word the officer spoke. The cop methodically went through each of the reasons for Sarah to turn Matt in: how dangerous he was, how many crimes he'd committed and people he had hurt. And the worst part was, he was incredibly convincing.

Their voices floated in from the living room, sounding clear as day to him.

_"…this man is dangerous. Unstable. Violent."_

_"I know."_

Her heartbeat didn't skip. That was the moment Matt realized how quickly everything was about to come crashing down around him.

He couldn't believe how stupid he'd been. When he'd walked her home the other night they had been amiable, even friendly. She'd made him laugh more than once with her quiet, odd sense of humor. But this—this entire situation—was a harsh reminder that they weren't friends. She was just someone he had frightened into working with him, and any temporary easiness between the two of them wasn't enough for her to put her safety and freedom on the line for him. Why would it be?

Whoever had come up with this plan—and Matt sincerely doubted that it was the two cops themselves—was smart, and methodical. Step one had been to scare Sarah into thinking she and her father were both two seconds from being locked up. Step two was to bring up every condemnation that could be leveled against Matt, including a few things that he could tell had deeply unnerved her. And finally, step three had been to offer money—a large amount, he would guess, based on her reaction to it—in exchange for simply giving the police his name. She had every reason in the world to do it.

If Sarah's rapid heartbeat as the cop closed the front door behind him was any indication, she was thinking the same. It only got faster when he stepped out of the bedroom door and into the living room. It took about two seconds of being in the same room with Sarah for it to become obvious that things had changed from the easy camaraderie they'd had earlier. The tension between them now was as bad at it had ever been.

"I guess now we know what he didn't want to say in front of your lawyers," Matt said, unable to keep his mouth from curling bitterly.

"Matt, I…I don't…" she began nervously before trailing off.

Matt slowly moved his way through the room until he was standing on the other side of the dining room table from her. He rested both hands on back of the chair in front of him, drumming his fingers agitatedly. She tensed, and he could sense her watching him closely as she clutched the envelope of money in her hand. Just how much money were they offering her, anyway? The way she had reacted made it seem like it was a lot. What was the price for turning him in?

"How much money is it?" he asked her very softly.

Something about the question—or maybe the tone of his voice—seemed to alarm Sarah, and she didn't answer him. He raised his eyebrows slowly.

"Do you not understand the question?"

"I—I just feel like that's not going to be very helpful as far as, um…keeping calm goes," she stuttered nervously.

She was probably right.

Matt circled around the table towards where she stood with the money, and she quickly started to back away.

"Matt—"

He caught her wrist before she could move out of his reach. Sarah's breathing hitched and she tried to pull away, but he kept a tight hold on her. He held his other hand out expectantly for the envelope.

"Let me see it," he said lowly.

Unsteadily, Sarah handed it to him, and he let go of her wrist. She immediately retreated another few feet, silently watching him as he examined the package.

Concentrating, he ran his fingers over the figure written on the outside of the envelope and was taken aback by just how large the sum was. Frowning, he repeated the action, running his fingers over the ink slower in case he had read the numbers wrong. But they remained the same. Opening the envelope, he thumbed through the two thick stacks of bills inside; they felt like hundreds, and there were a lot of them. Whoever wanted him turned in was willing to invest a lot of money into making sure it happened.

Matt ran his tongue over his lower lip in agitation, remembering the way her heart had flipped when she'd opened the envelope.

"You're thinking of taking it," he said simply.

"I never said that," she argued weakly, but the slight skip in her heartbeat gave her away. She might not have made up her mind, but at the very least she was considering it.

Matt rubbed his mouth and threw the envelope back down. He turned away from Sarah, leaning forward and resting both hands on the table while he took a deep breath to calm himself.

"Can you honestly tell me that you aren't thinking about doing it?" he asked her suddenly. "Turning me in? Can you in all truthfulness tell me, right now, that part of you isn't considering it?"

He sensed her hesitating. She remained silent.

A strong combination of hopelessness, panic, and anger suddenly surged through him, and he lashed out, seizing the mug that was sitting on the table next to his hand and hurling it at the wall, where it exploded into tiny shards.

From behind him, he heard Sarah jump at the loud shattering noise and swear anxiously under her breath.

"Matt, stop it," she said shakily. "I'm not—I didn't—"

"You didn't what, Sarah?" he snapped. "Didn't buy into what he just told you? Didn't already decide what side you're taking?"

"T-this just happened two seconds ago, I haven't even…y-you can't just assume what's going to happen—"

She was speaking in half-truths, dancing around the subject in an obvious attempt to keep him calm. He tilted his head, letting out a short, mirthless laugh.

"I think it's pretty clear what's going to happen," he told her.

Matt had meant that he thought it was clear she was going to turn him in, but as soon as he said the words he could tell by her reaction that she had interpreted it as a threat. He considered elaborating, but it was too late. He could sense her tense up, knew she was going to try to slip by him before she even moved. Sure enough, she tried to skirt around him, moving surprisingly fast.

Reacting instinctively, Matt quickly sidestepped and caught her loosely around the waist with one arm. Sarah stumbled as he easily maneuvered her backwards a few feet until he had her lightly pressed against the wall. He was careful to avoid exerting any pressure where she was still badly bruised, especially around the cut on her lower back. He kept one hand splayed across her stomach, barely using any force, but keeping her pinned in place all the same. His other hand loosely caught her wrist again, pulling her hand away from where she had flattened it against his chest in a vain attempt to keep him from coming closer, and trapping it against the wall a few inches from her head.

Any more than that wasn't really necessary; he knew full well what effect he was having on her just from what he was already doing, and he was surprised at how uncomfortable it made him. Sarah's heart was thudding so loudly that he could feel it beating throughout her whole body. He'd forgotten how light she was, how small her wrists and waist felt under his hands.

"Matt…" she said anxiously, a pleading tone in her voice. "Don't do this."

He felt a sharp twist of guilt at the sound of her heart racing fearfully in the way that it used to when they first met. He knew part of it was that she'd already been on edge the whole night, even before that cop showed up at her apartment. But part of it was still a lingering fear that he was dangerous, that he was going to hurt her. Definitely not helped by her chat with Officer McDermott earlier. And probably only worsened by the pain that Ronan had so recently inflicted on her. Taking advantage of that fear felt oddly unsettling.

But he didn't have much of a choice, did he? This was it: the big thing Matt had been dreading since the day Sarah found out who he was. Now wasn't the time to be concerned with how she was feeling, not when he had people he cared about to protect.

Matt gripped her wrist tighter, readying himself to exert whatever intimidation and violence it took to keep everything from falling apart.

But the seconds ticked by, and he remained frozen.

There were a lot of questionable things that Matt was capable of. But as he pinned Sarah against the wall, listening to her uneven breathing and racing heartbeat, he was forced to accept the fact that this, apparently, was no longer one of them.

He let go of her abruptly, throwing her slightly off balance as he took a step back and turned away, running a hand through his hair. That was it. The only leverage he had to use against her, and he couldn't bring himself to do it.

Matt swore loudly as he slammed his hand down on the table. Sarah tensed at the outburst, very clearly put on edge by his conflicting actions. She didn't move as he caught his breath, determined to salvage at least part of this mess. He turned back to her, purposefully ignoring the way she shrank back slightly against the wall.

"I…I know you want me to leave," he said quietly, still breathing heavily. "And I _will_. But I need you to listen to me first, Sarah. Just for two minutes."

A long pause followed his words.

"Or what?" she asked, barely above a whisper at first and then more forcefully, her heart thudding apprehensively as bitterness slipped into her voice. "Are you going to bounce me off the walls, Matt? What happens if I don't listen to you?"

Matt worked his jaw, frustrated by her timing. Of all the times for her to irrationally stand up to him, did she have to pick right now? When he desperately needed her to just listen to what he was saying?

"Nothing," he said finally. "Nothing happens."

She gave a short laugh of disbelief, jittery and nervous sounding. Of course she didn't believe that; why would she? Between what Officer McDermott had told her and the fact that he'd just put his hands on her—again—she was two steps away from panicking. There was no way she was going to listen to him like this.

Matt strode over to the couch, where Sarah had left her purse, and reached inside the bag. He found her stun gun immediately and withdrew it from the purse. Sarah's breathing quickened in alarm at the sight of him holding the weapon.

"What—what are you…what are you doing?" she stammered as she edged further into the corner, away from him.

Did she really think he was going to use it on her? Sarah was half his size; he couldn't think of any situation in which he'd need to resort to using an actual weapon to subdue her.

Matt raised his eyebrows and held the small stun gun up, showing her that his finger was off the switch.

"Catch," he said, then tossed it to her.

Sarah fumbled a bit as she caught it, clearly taken by surprise.

"Now you're armed," he said quietly. "So will you please calm down and listen to me?"

She looked down at the stun gun, and although he couldn't see the expression on her face, he was sure it was a distrustful one; they both knew that if it came down to it, a stun gun wouldn't be much help. Despite the questionable usefulness of the weapon he'd given her, the symbolism of the gesture seemed to do the trick, and she reluctantly nodded.

"Alright."

Matt slowly made his way back across the room, stopping a decent distance away from Sarah. She gripped the stun gun so tightly that he'd be willing to bet her knuckles were turning white.

"I know that you have a lot of reasons to turn me in," he began. "And not a whole lot of reasons not to. I know there's not much I can say to change your mind. But whatever you decide to do, just—please…let me know if I need to get my friends out of town."

"…what?" Sarah sounded completely thrown.

"I've broken the law. A lot. I—I know that. I've hurt a lot of people, including you. And…if you decide to turn me in, I'll stick around and deal with the consequences. I won't come after you. But…but you've met Foggy. And Claire. And they've helped you. They're good people, Sarah, you _know_ that. They haven't done anything wrong, and they don't deserve—" Matt's words caught in his throat and he paused for a few seconds before continuing. "They don't deserve the things that will happen to them if I get arrested."

"And what about me?" she asked in small voice. "And my father? Do we deserve what's going to happen to us when I get arrested?"

"No," he said immediately, shaking his head. "No. That won't happen."

"How do you know that?" she demanded desperately. "You heard those cops. They're dying to throw me in prison and lock my dad away in some shitty facility if I don't cooperate with them."

"We won't let them do that," Matt said adamantly. "All the things they're saying they'll do, they—they're bluffing. Just, trust me—"

"Trust you?" she interrupted him incredulously. "I can't even trust you t-to be in the same room as me without flying off the handle. But you want me to trust you with my whole future? Just like that?"

Matt winced at the truth behind her words. "I know it doesn't make any sense to trust me, but…I'll keep you and your dad out of trouble, I promise."

"You can't promise that," Sarah whispered. "You're a lawyer, not a magician."

Matt instinctively clenched his fists in frustration and Sarah noticed immediately, her heartbeat spiking as she gripped her stun gun tighter. He was losing her. He took a step back, giving her more space and holding his hands open in what he hoped was a non-threatening way.

"Listen. You want to take that money and get your dad out of town, I…I can't really blame you. Officer McDermott made a good case for it. But the things I've done are on me. Not on my friends. He gave you til Monday night. If you make that choice, just give me a phone call, a—a text message. Something. You can do it from the lobby of the precinct if you want to, just…give me that heads up. _Please_." Matt was unable to keep the pleading tone out of his voice, and he hated it.

Matt listened to Sarah's breathing and the rustle of her hair as she looked from him to the table, where he knew she was probably staring at the photos the cop had left there. She looked back at him. Finally, after what seemed like hours, she nodded tightly.

A tiny flash of relief ran through him. At the very least, she was going to give him a heads up if she made that call, so that he could ensure that the blame landed on him and only him—not on any of the people he cared about.

Secure in that small respite, he grabbed his cane from the corner and left her apartment without a word.

As he reached the stairwell at the end of the hall, he heard her lock the door behind him—all three locks—securing the deadbolt with a loud, final sounding click.


	15. Games

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi lovelies! Just so you know, sometime in December I'll be posting a special one-shot companion to this for Christmas. I won't say any more than that right now, but if you're interested in reading it make sure that you keep an eye out, since I'll probably be posting it sometime after Chapter 16!

Sarah leaned her head against the front door after she locked it, trying to breathe steadily. She hadn't seen that side of Matt in a while, and she had nearly forgotten how terrifying he was when he wanted to be. Her head was spinning with confusion as she slowly started to come down from the fear-induced adrenaline rush that had kicked in when he'd backed her into the wall. She had been positive at that moment that he was going to go full Daredevil on her to keep her from taking the bribe and turning him in. So why hadn't he?

Running a shaking hand through her hair, she crossed the room back to the dining room table, where she began gathering the photos together to put them back into the folder. She flipped the folder open, forgetting that there were still more photos inside, and she was immediately greeted by the gory sight of a half-flattened body on a sidewalk, surrounded by police tape. Her stomach turned. She vaguely remembered reading about this one in the news: a junkie had thrown himself off the roof, and his friend who had been shooting up in the same room swore he had seen Daredevil knocking the guy around beforehand. But he couldn't seem to say for certain if it had been real or a hallucination, and soon enough the news had dropped the story.

Oddly enough, this one almost bothered Sarah more than all the others. One of the most unnerving things about Matt—of which there were many—was the way he seemed to get so consumed by his temper. She was willing to bet that if he were ever to kill someone, that's how it would happen: he'd be interrogating a lowlife somewhere and would simply go too far, throw him over the edge of the building. No chance to calm down or change his mind; just a split second decision that ended in a dead body.

Sarah closed her eyes and inhaled slowly. Maybe looking at more photos wasn't a good idea. She stuffed them all back into the folder before letting her gaze fall on the ceramic shards that now littered the floor. Reluctantly, she grabbed her dust pan and brush and slowly knelt next to the broken pieces. One more glaringly obvious reminder that no matter how comfortable they had started to become with one another, Matt Murdock was still a violent, dangerous person.

Matt had pinned her to a wall by her throat, scared her to the point of passing out. Matt had threatened to break her arm, then dragged her into an alleyway and terrified her. Matt had left her with a bruised arm and the sound of his hands slamming into the dumpster echoing in her ears for days. Matt had repeatedly used his size and strength to manhandle and intimidate her, taken every opportunity to show her that he was willing and able to hurt her.

Matt had also helped her after Ronan attacked her. Matt had been gentle and quiet and bandaged her hands, even after she had busted his lip open in a panic. Matt had given her ice packs, and taken care of her father's traffic ticket. Matt had asked Claire to help her, despite knowing the risks. Matt had agreed to look after her father for her, and taken it upon himself to track down Ronan after what he had done to her. Matt had given her his jacket and helped her through her panic attack.

But that was the problem, wasn't it? The man couldn't seem to pick whether he wanted to hurt her or help her.

Sarah couldn't seem to muster the energy to get back up and go throw out the broken mug she'd cleaned up, choosing instead to sit back against the wall tiredly. She turned her head when she heard a tiny scratching noise, and she spotted the mouse lingering under her dining room table.

"Don't you come in here unless you have advice for me," she warned the rodent.

He simply twitched his tail. _Useless mouse._

When Sarah was younger, her father had been an adamant supporter of Pros and Cons lists, no matter what the problem was. Making a physical list felt too silly in a situation like this one, so instead Sarah made a mental one in her head:

Pros: Almost too many to count. She could buy a new life for both her and her father, in a different country—on a different continent. He could get proper healthcare and she could go back to playing piano full time. No more letters from the electric company threatening to cut her services off. No more hoping the price of her father's medication doesn't increase again. No more Ronan or Jason or sleazy cops. No more staying up at night wondering if she was doing the right thing partnering up with a wanted vigilante.

Cons: It made her heart hurt in a strange way to think of Matt going to prison because of her.

The thought was ridiculous. She had no obligation to protect someone who constantly showed little to no regard for her own safety and privacy. But nagging questions kept popping into her brain anyway: What would happen to Matt in prison, locked away with the same criminals he had put there? What would happen to the streets of Hell's Kitchen without him? Since they'd first made their deal, Sarah had started closely following mentions of Daredevil in the press—a habit she would never mention to Matt—curious to see what he did with his time when he wasn't with her. A few times a week, stories cropped up of people who owed their lives and safety to a mysterious man in a black mask. His presence in the news would only increase if his identity was exposed: a blind lawyer becoming a vigilante would be a national story. Would she feel guilty seeing Matt's face splashed across the newspapers, hearing news anchors condemn him on TV?

She groaned in frustration and slid her knees up so that she could rest her forehead on them. She turned her head slightly to see the mouse still staring at her. _Judging me, probably._

"What do you care?" she whispered resentfully at the small mouse. "He doesn't even like you."

The mouse, clearly offended by the comment, scurried back into the kitchen, and Sarah remained sitting on the floor alone, a dustpan of broken pieces on her lap.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The rest of the weekend passed in a similar haze of internal debate. Sarah wished that she had someone—anyone—that she could talk to about it, to get a clear opinion. But the only person who knew enough about the situation to have an opinion was the one-man Matt Murdock Support Group known as Foggy Nelson, and there was no way he was going to be able to give her any unbiased advice. ( _Yes, please send my best friend to prison, Sarah. And me as well, possibly. Seems like a good idea._ ) So, she spent much of the weekend alternating between thinking about her dilemma and carefully avoiding doing just that. After the first few hours, she had shoved the envelope of money into her nightstand drawer so that she didn't have to look at it anymore.

Monday at Orion was predictably tense for Sarah, who found herself constantly on edge, thinking that Jason or someone else was going to bring up the bribe at any time. But no one did, and her workday ended up being mercifully short. She had just come back from another inexplicably detailed errand of no apparent importance, and was settling into her desk to answer emails when she heard Jason's muffled voice coming from his office. She frowned when she glanced at the phone on her desk and saw that the line in his office wasn't in use. Jason used his work phone almost exclusively; he was constantly buzzing her on the intercom to have her put him through to various numbers. So to hear him on his cell phone at work was attention-grabbing, and it was only made worse by the way his voice got louder with each sentence. Jason _never_ raised his voice; it was one of the things that made him so intimidating.

"—not today, everything is just about to kick off and I—"

Sarah paused her typing, trying to pick up snatches of his conversation. It sounded like whoever was on the other end of the line kept interrupting him.

"—not here all the time like I am, they don't understand how important it is—"

There was a long silence, and Sarah strained her ears to hear more. She was listening so closely that she jumped noticeably when the door to Jason's office banged open dramatically. Despite the theatrical entrance, he seemed as unruffled as usual when he emerged from the office, save for a strange tightness to his usual wide grin.

"Sarah. You can go home for the day," Jason informed her, slipping a heavy coat on over his suit. He always dressed like it was freezing outside, even with the late spring temperatures starting to build into summer. "I have some business to attend to."

Sarah glanced at the clock on the wall; it was barely past two in the afternoon. Any other day she would have jumped at the opportunity to leave so early, but today she was desperate to stick around and find out what that phone call was about. "Are you sure?"

Jason's answer faded on his lips as his phone buzzed with a new text message. He scanned it, then sent a look of trepidation upwards, towards the ceiling. Sarah followed his gaze in bewilderment, but didn't see anything.

"Actually, go ahead and take tomorrow off, too," Jason said distractedly, not even bothering to follow up the instructions with his usual plastic cheerfulness, as he usually did. Instead he just turned and headed for the staircase, still tapping at his screen. Sarah watched him as the door swung closed behind him, and she could have sworn she saw him start to head upstairs—to the fourth floor—instead of down to the exit.

Sarah sat there dumbly for a minute before starting to gather her things. She wasn't sure if she was glad to have these extra few hours of thinking before having to make her decision tonight. She felt like she'd exhausted the arguments for either decision after thinking about nothing else all weekend, and she still hadn't figured out what to do. She bit her lip as she slung her purse over her shoulder. There was one person who she knew could help make her feel better, even if he couldn't actually give her any advice on the situation. As she exited the building, skirting past the new and unfriendly security team at the entrance, she pulled her cell phone out of her bag.

Her father answered after a few rings.

"Hey, Dad. I got off work early today. Mind if I come over?"

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

If the past few days of introspection had made Sarah lean towards taking Matt's side, stepping foot into her father's apartment Monday afternoon had the opposite effect. Glancing around the apartment as she set her purse aside, it not only became easy to imagine taking the money, but almost like a betrayal not to. Her eyes swept over the blank walls—all of the pictures had now been banished to the stacks in the corner of the room—and the thick layer of dust that had settled over most of the shelves and windowsills. Then she frowned at the pile of unopened newspapers stacked against the wall next to her dad's recliner, still stuffed into their plastic sleeves. Her father used to read the news religiously every day. There were more than a few dirty dishes around the room, and the trash needed to be taken out.

But Mitch himself seemed to be having a relatively good day, and he greeted her with more clarity in his expression than she had seen him show in a while.

"What a nice surprise," he exclaimed, greeting her with a warm hug. "Some special occasion that they let you off work early?"

She smiled at him weakly and shook her head. "No, they just…didn't need me anymore today." _Due to mysterious phone calls._

Mitch nodded, then his face lit up excitedly. "Hey. You know what was on sale last time I went to the grocery store? Those peanut butter cookies you used to like. I got three packages."

Sarah laughed softly at his enthusiasm as he disappeared into the kitchen, mostly because she did used to love peanut butter cookies growing up, and the fact that he could recall that was comforting in a bittersweet way. As alien as the apartment looked, and as out-of-character her father acted these days, there was a part of him that was still _Mitch_ , and catching glimpses of that person was always simultaneously painful and comforting.

While her father was in the kitchen, Sarah allowed her mind to wander longingly. Once her father had the proper therapy and support that he needed—that she couldn't provide on her own—maybe she would get to see those glimpses of the real Mitch more often. Once his mind wasn't taxed with finances and worrying about her health, he could focus more on staying healthy and present. They could stock the entire kitchen—which, in their new house far away, would be large and full of windows—with foods they loved, like the peanut butter cookies. The image was tempting, to say the least.

"Hey, do you know who won the game last night?" Mitch called from the other room. "I fell asleep on the couch before I could watch."

"I have no idea. I can look it up," she called back, getting up from her perch on the arm rest of the couch and making her way over to her father's desk. She shook the mouse to wake up the ancient computer that he refused to replace. The local news was his homepage, so she scanned it to see if the scores were listed anywhere. She found them, and was just about to read them off when a photo of a familiar face caught her eye: the sandy-haired police officer who had played the 'Bad Cop' to Aaron McDermott's 'Good Cop' in the station. It was just a small picture, inserted next to a quote he had given the newspaper about safety regulations for some fluff piece on an upcoming marathon. According to the caption, is last name was Donovan.

Forgetting about the sports scores, Sarah quickly opened Google in another tab and typed in the officer's name along with the words 'NYPD 15th Precinct' to see what would come up. His name appeared in several police blotters and articles, the first of which she went ahead and clicked on.

"Are you on a church website, there?" she heard from behind her. Her father leaned over to look at the photo on the screen, which only showed Donovan from the neck up, making it difficult to tell he was in uniform.

"Hmm?" Sarah said, distracted by the police blotter she'd just brought up and only half listening. "No. Why?"

"Well, that's one of the Jehovah's Witnesses that came to see me a few times."

It took Sarah a second to fully register what he'd said. She whipped her head around to get a better look at Mitch, trying to figure out if he was just having a moment of confusion. But his eyes were lucid and clear of uncertainty.

"This…this guy?" she said, pointing at the photo on the screen. "Are you sure? Maybe he just looks like him?"

Mitch shook his head resolutely. "No, no, that's definitely him. Him and a dark-haired guy with a funny nose."

Sarah recognized the description immediately, and entered Aaron's name into Google the same way she had Donovan's. A photo came up of him and two other police officers; all three of them were dressed down, but she could barely make out that they were wearing police sweatshirts. She looked back at her father, who was squinting at the photo.

"Yes. That one on the left, there," he said, pointing directly at Aaron.

Her stomach dropped. If those two had been at her dad's house, she was positive it hadn't been on any police-sanctioned business. Not with the way they had acted in the police station and at her apartment.

"Have they come to see you in a while?" she asked Mitch.

"I'm not sure." He paused to think about it, but she could tell he was struggling. Dates and time were the most difficult thing for him these days. "It…seems like it was recent."

"Okay. Okay," Sarah said, trying to keep her voice patient. She desperately wanted more information, but didn't want to push him. And the thought that those cops had spoken to her father, come into his home and pretended to be there on a mission of good—the thought pissed her off, and she didn't want Mitch picking up on that. "Listen, just…don't answer the door for them anymore, okay? Don't talk to them."

"Why?"

How was she supposed to explain to him what was going on? That they were undercover cops, but that she had no idea if they were really working for the police or someone else entirely? Would he remember if they showed up again; would he say something to them that would just put him in further danger?

"I've just seen a lot on the news about people getting robbed after getting visited by guys like that," she lied, relying on her father's inherent acceptance of sensational stories he saw on the news. "You…you never know if they are who they say they are. I know it seems like they're trying to help, but maybe they're not."

"Oh, I know that," he replied, surprising her. "I've never been a religious man. All this talk of eternal paradise just for following the correct writings in the right book? I know when something sounds too good to be true, and what those guys are peddling is sure included in that."

The truth behind his words hit her hard. She had been holding out hope of a golden ticket to get her and her father to a paradise of sorts—maybe not the Heavenly kind, but the kind without Orion looming over them. But he was right; it had sounded too good to be true because it was. If those two were working for Orion…Matt would probably never make it to prison. Whoever that money came from didn't want him arrested; they wanted him dead. Giving her the first $20,000 up front had been smart; when she'd been holding all of that cash in her hands, it had been hard to imagine ever giving it back. But now, looking at the computer screen and seeing Aaron's pixilated face smiling back at her, she realized it had probably never really been hers to begin with. Even if Orion would let that much money walk away, the Sarah who walked away with it wouldn't be the same person she was now. The picture she'd had in her head of a safe place for her and her father slowly faded away

Sarah had thought that when she finally made her decision, it would be like an epiphany. Instead, it hit her very slowly, a piece at a time. The news that Aaron and his partner weren't who they had claimed to be wasn't shocking, but it made the correct path that much more undeniable.

"I have to go, Dad," she said suddenly, turning to her father.

"What?" Mitch protested. "You just got here."

"I know, I'm—I'm sorry," she said as she stood up from the computer chair. "But I just realized I have to go do something."

A wave of guilt swept over Sarah as she surveyed her father, who stood there with the package of cookies in his hand, looking taken aback by her sudden exit. She knew that Mitch had no way of knowing what she had almost been able to give him; the stress-free life that they could have happily lived elsewhere. It's not like he would know the opportunity he was missing, but she would. And as much as she was convinced it wouldn't have really ever worked, it still felt like she was letting him down.

She stepped forward and hugged him tightly, wrapping her arms around his neck like she used to when she was younger.

"I'm really sorry, Dad," she whispered in his ear.

"It's not that big of a deal, Sarah," he said, clearly confused by her strong reaction but dutifully trying to cheer her up. "They're only cookies."

"I know," she said, breaking away from the embrace. She felt tiny pricks behind her eyes, and hurriedly grabbed her things, avoiding meeting his eyes. She kept her voice as light as she could. "I'll come over soon and we can eat cookies and do some—some spring cleaning, okay? I'll bring pizza. Maybe I'll even get mushrooms on it."

"As pizza is meant to have," Mitch agreed.

When she reached the door, she turned and dug through her bag until her fingers curled around her stun gun. She opened the drawer of the side table next to the door and held the stun gun up for her father to see before dropping it into the drawer.

"Keep this here, okay? Just…just in case you ever need it," she told him.

Mitch wrinkled his brow. "Well, what are you going to carry? Hell's Kitchen isn't the safest neighborhood."

She held up her key ring, which had a large canister of pepper spray dangling off of it. "I'll be fine. All I do is go to work and go home, anyway."

That was technically true, for the most part. Although if she didn't feel the usual twinge of guilt she always got from lying to her father, it was only because it was drowned out by the storm of other emotions spinning around her head as she closed the door to his sparse apartment behind her.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

A little over half an hour later—after taking a brief detour to her apartment—Sarah found herself standing in lobby of the fifteenth precinct.

"Hi," she said nervously, catching the attention of the desk sergeant. He looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn't place from where. "I'm—I'm here to see Officer McDermott?"

The man craned his neck to look at the clock. "He's still on his meal break right now, but he should be back in about ten minutes or so. If you wanna wait over there, I can let him know you're here when he gets back. What's your name?" he asked, grabbing a pen and shuffling some papers around until he found his notepad.

Sarah paused for a second before answering. "Sarah."

He poised the pen over the paper and looked up at her expectantly, waiting for her last name. She just returned the look innocently, hoping he wouldn't press for one.

"…okay," he said finally, writing down only her first name. "Sarah. If you don't mind taking a seat on the bench over there, he'll be back shortly."

"Thank you," she told him, glancing down at his nametag. _Mahoney_ , she repeated mentally. She was slightly -reassured by how normal he seemed; calm and professional, like an actual cop and not someone playing a role.

She settled onto the wooden bench and crossed her legs. Her hands were shaking slightly, and she crossed her arms to conceal it, distractedly looking up at the television mounted on the wall but not really paying attention to what was happening on the screen.

"You alright?"

Sarah looked over to see Sergeant Mahoney surveying her with a concerned look. She hadn't realized she'd been nervously bouncing her foot, and she stopped immediately.

"Yes," she said. "Yeah, I'm fine. It's just, uh…cold by the door, is all," she told him. It wasn't necessarily a lie; the cool breeze from the rainy day blustered in every time the front door opened, chilling the room slightly.

Mahoney looked unconvinced, narrowing his eyes at her. "You're one of Nelson and Murdock's clients, aren't you? You were in here a few days ago."

Sarah's eyes widened slightly as she faltered before answering reluctantly. "Yeah."

He nodded, looking down at his papers and then back up at her. "You sure you don't want either of them here with you? I know they aren't too busy. You've gotta be one of the only clients they've got at that place."

She tucked her hair behind her ear nervously. To be honest, maybe they should be here with her, to make sure she didn't dig herself any deeper into a legal hole. But part of her wasn't even sure they would show up, considering the circumstances. It made her feel oddly alone.

"No. I'm just here to talk about something. I don't think it's anything I would need them for," she lied. The front doors opened again, letting a gust of wind in. She shivered slightly, although she wasn't sure it was actually due to the cold.

The sergeant sighed and glanced back at the room full of cubicles. Turning back to her, he gestured towards a cubicle in the far corner of the room.

"You can wait for him at his desk, if you want. Just don't draw a lot of attention to yourself, okay? You aren't technically supposed to be back there without an officer accompanying you, but…no one really listens to that rule," he said quietly with a small shrug.

"Oh," Sarah said, caught slightly off guard. "Um, thank you."

Mahoney just nodded, giving her a strange look as she opened the short gate through the partition dividing the waiting room from the office area, making her way back to the desk Mahoney had pointed to. She glanced at the nameplate on the table to make sure it was Aaron's before taking a seat in front of the desk.

While she waited, Sarah stared at a pile of papers and zoned out, letting her brain imagine all of the awful consequences that could come from this decision. She was so deep in her thoughts that it took her a few minutes to notice her own name on one of the papers she was staring at. It was scrawled on a small sheet of paper that was sticking out of a folder. She blinked, then glanced around quickly. Sergeant Mahoney was busy filling out paperwork, and the few other cops that were in the room were similarly preoccupied. She leaned forward and craned her neck to read what was written: it was just a list of five names, and hers was third on the list. She vaguely recognized the other four names as other Orion employees, although she didn't know any of them personally.

Glancing around again, Sarah quickly slid her phone out of her jacket pocket and snapped a photo of the list, fairly positive that she wouldn't be able to remember the names on her own. She shoved her phone back in her pocket and let her gaze sweep over the rest of his desk in search of anything else interesting, but she didn't see anything. She was tempted to just leave the envelope of cash on his desk and haul ass out of there, but she was too concerned that somehow the money wouldn't find its way back to him, and then she'd have a whole other problem on her hands.

"Sarah," came a voice from behind her. "I was so hoping to see you here tonight."

Aaron circled around the desk and settled into his chair, giving her an excited smile. The sight of him looking so certain of his success set off a spark of irritation somewhere inside her head.

"Alright, so let me just get a pen and paper and a recorder if I can find it," he muttered, opening his desk drawers and digging through them.

"Actually, I…" Sarah trailed off nervously before taking a deep breath and continuing, "I came to give you the money back."

Aaron halted his pen-finding efforts and looked up at her in confusion, as though he assumed he had misheard her.

"I'm sorry?" he said.

Sarah slipped the envelope out of her purse and slid it across the desk to him. "All twenty thousand is still in there."

"I don't understand, I, uh, I thought we were on the same page here," Aaron said with a nervous chuckle. Something about the unease in his expression made Sarah realize suddenly that he had someone to answer to in all of this, and that they wouldn't be happy if he couldn't get any information from her or the other names on his list. But she found that she had no sympathy for his predicament.

"No, we weren't on the same page," Sarah told him, noting that her voice sounded much less shaky than she felt. "I told you that I don't know anything, and I don't. I can't take money in exchange for information that I don't have. I'm sorry."

Aaron rubbed his hand across his mouth before leaning back in his chair and forcing a much more strained smile. Sarah found herself wondering if he had used this same fake-friendly routine on her father when he'd shown up at his place, made Mitch think he was there to help him as he invaded his privacy and took advantage of her father's muddled mental state. The idea of it made her skin heat up as that spark of irritation slowly burned into full on anger.

"Listen," Aaron said, his voice carefully light and amiable, which only served to make him sound irritatingly condescending, "you're a nice girl—"

"You don't know that," Sarah interrupted him suddenly. "You don't know anything about me."

The smile finally slid from his face completely, and he looked around before leaning forward and speaking in a much harder voice than she had heard him use yet.

"I know that the moment you walk out of this station today, this deal is off the table. That means if you wake up in a hospital two months from now because this guy lost it and broke half your bones, your ass is going to prison, too. Do you get that? Do you understand at all what's happening?"

The Good Cop façade was gone now, and Sarah felt a tiny flicker of victory at making the cop show his true colors, despite the slight rush of trepidation that his words had triggered. If he was going to arrest her, he at least had to do it without the stupid, sycophantic friend act he had been playing up.

"I think I do understand," she said, surprised at how calm she sounded, considering how fast her heart was pounding. She stood up hesitantly, and he made no move to stop her. Apparently Matt had been right about that, at least; at this point, Aaron had nothing solid to arrest her on. That didn't mean he wouldn't be able to dig something up, and she wanted to leave before he could get inside her head with doubts again. She turned to leave. "Sorry I couldn't be more help."

"I guess you aren't as smart as I'd hoped you were, then," Aaron called after her in a carefully disappointed voice, causing her to turn back.

"No, I guess not," Sarah agreed simply, not bothering to argue. Reaching into her bag, she dug out the King James Bible she had taken from her father's place. She tossed it onto Aaron's desk, where it landed with a loud thump. "You left this at my dad's place, by the way. Thought you might want it back."

She only caught a brief glimpse of the surprised look on Aaron's face before she turned and hurried out of the cubicle area, past Sergeant Mahoney and out the door, trying to ignore the apprehension twisting in her stomach as the full impact of the choice she'd just made started to set in.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Once she was outside the station, she took a deep breath of fresh air, which helped calm her down slightly. It was still drizzling, leaving the streets mostly empty of people, but she found that she didn't mind the slight rain. She got to the end of the block and stopped, ducking under a covered bus stop and reaching for her cell phone. As she scrolled through her contacts to find Matt's number she rubbed her shoulder, which was aching from where the thick stacks of money and heavy Bible had been weighing her purse down. Her finger hovered over his contact name as she completely blanked on what to text him.

Sarah was so absorbed in her phone's screen that she didn't even notice someone else duck into the covered bus stop and hover nervously nearby.

"Please don't make that phone call."

It took Sarah a second to realize that she was being spoken to. Looking up from her screen, she was startled to see Foggy standing there with his hands in the pockets of his rain coat, looking more serious than she had seen him look since the night she met him, when his best friend was bleeding out under a scaffolding.

"Matt filled me on what's going on. I'm guessing you're on your way to the precinct and that you're about to call Matt and give him that heads up," Foggy said, gesturing towards the phone in her hands. "And he made it very clear, in no uncertain terms, that I was to steer clear of you, and the police station, and anywhere else where I might end up handcuffed. But obviously I don't listen to Matt when he tells me what to do, so here I am, really, _really_ hoping that I can change your mind."

Sarah shook her head, trying to explain. "Foggy—"

"Just, listen, please. Matt is my best friend. He's like my family, except not as loud or obnoxious. And…sometimes I still feel _so_ angry with him for the choices he makes. The danger he puts himself in, the extremes he goes to. But I move past it, because I _know_ that he does it for good reasons. He's a good person. One of the best. And maybe one of the dumbest," he added as an afterthought, before shaking his head and continuing his speech. "But he's dumb for the right reasons. Because he wants to help people. Maybe you don't know him well enough yet to see that, but I do."

Sarah started to interrupt again, but found that she didn't want to. Foggy's words were having a strange effect on her: simultaneously digging at the small part of her that felt guilty while also fueling a strange sense of relief that there was at least one other person on the planet who would believe her decision to be the right one. So she let him continue.

"I know that you and Matt don't have the best history, but you guys have been better lately, right? Maybe not best friends, but better than _this_ , at least. I mean, this would _literally_ be selling him out, Sarah. Like, actually selling his identity for a bunch of cash," Foggy said slowly, causing the guilty feeling in her stomach to stir even more.

"I know. I gave the money back, Foggy," she said quietly, cutting him off before he could continue his speech.

"Well—what—you did?"

She nodded.

Foggy threw his hands up. "Then why did you just let me say all of that?"

Sarah shrugged, crossing her arms uncomfortably. "I don't know. Kind of felt like I deserved to hear it, I guess."

"You just let me lecture you because you thought you deserved it?" Foggy clarified, eyebrows raised. "Are you sure you aren't Catholic, too?"

"Maybe I should be. I do like incense," she offered. "That was a good speech, though. I can see why you're a lawyer."

"So, you really didn't turn him in?" Foggy asked. "That's great. When are you going to tell him? He's been freaking out all weekend."

"Like, throwing things?" she asked knowingly, but Foggy just frowned and shook his head.

"What? No. Like being all withdrawn and angsty. This has really been weighing on him," he told her. She looked down and fidgeted with her phone case.

"Well, maybe you could tell him," she suggested hopefully.

"Some reason you can't?"

"I kind of get the feeling he won't want to talk to the girl who almost just sold him out," she told him with a dry laugh. "And if he does, it's probably not in a friendly way."

Foggy watched a few people go past as he considered it. Finally he rolled his eyes.

"Alright. I'll be your go-between," he said begrudgingly, then pointed a stern finger at her. "But just this once. You and Matt need to learn how to use your words and not your fists, already. Or your bottle openers, or whatever. Between the two of you, I feel like I'm refereeing a WWE match."

"Tell that to him," she said defensively.

Foggy gave her a meaningful look. "I _have_."

They didn't say anything else for a few moments, until finally Sarah slowly stood up and shouldered her purse.

"You going home?" Foggy asked.

"Yeah. At some point. First, I'm going to stop by the liquor store and blow my food budget on alcohol instead," she told him with a strained smile. "Because apparently today is a day for making questionable decisions."

"Alright. Well, I'm going to try to go find Matt, then. Let him know he can come down off high alert."

"Where is he?"

"Who knows? He left the office a little while ago. But I figure I'll check the boxing gym or church first. Those are usually the two options when you're involved."

Sarah gave him a slightly alarmed look at the idea that Matt often went to the boxing gym because of her—whatever that meant. She also had no idea why she would have any effect on his church attendance, but she was too tired and eager to go home to push either subject.

"Well…good luck with finding him," she said, pausing at the overhang of the bus shelter to glance up at the grey sky, which was still drizzling gloomily.

"Hey," Foggy said, and she looked back at him over her shoulder. "You made the right call here. You _really_ did."

She wasn't sure yet if she fully believed that, but she let the words reassure her anyway as she made her way down the block.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

A short while later, Sarah let herself into her apartment—carrying a brown paper bag containing the cheapest vodka the liquor store offered—and automatically secured all of the locks on the door behind her.

She shivered slightly; the rain that had felt so refreshing before had now seeped into her bones and all she wanted was a hot shower. Eyeing the bottle of vodka thoughtfully, she unscrewed the top and took a deep swig, screwing her face up at the awful taste. Satisfied, she left the bottle on the counter while she went to take a shower.

Half an hour later, when her hot water finally ran out, she emerged from the steamy warmth of her bathroom in pajama pants and tank top. She toweled her hair as she shuffled into the kitchen and grabbed a tumbler from the cupboard. The plan was to drink away the nervous buzz under her skin while doing more research on the two shady officers, or maybe on the other names on the list. Instead, she ended up doing the drinking while gazing distantly at her laptop, which remained closed.

Sarah had just finished her third sizable shot of vodka and was beginning the feel a pleasant numbing sensation when she heard a knock. Automatically, she looked at the window, but there was no one there; it wasn't even dark out yet. She turned her head to the front door. A brief flash of nervousness ran through her—at what point did she start feeling so anxious every time someone came to her door?—but it was dulled by the alcohol already making the rounds through her veins.

When she looked through the peep hole, she wasn't sure if she was relieved or not to see that it was Matt standing outside. She undid the locks on the door and opened it slowly. Matt was dressed more casually than she had ever seen him—save for the night she had stitched him up—wearing a simple black t-shirt instead of his usual work suit. She wondered where Foggy had ended up finding him. He held the top of his cane with both hands, rolling it slightly between his thumb and index finger as he seemed to debate what to say. She kept a hand on the door while she waited.

"I spoke to Foggy a little while ago," Matt said finally. "I was…hoping you and I could talk."

Sarah gave him a cautious look, trying to ascertain his mood. It could be difficult to tell with his glasses on, but he looked calm enough. Not in the midst of a violent panic, at least, and that was a step up. He was sporting several new bruise—the most conspicuous being a dark one blooming just under the sleeve of his t-shirt, and another ringing the bottom half of his left eye. His knuckles were a painful-looking red and several of them were split; obviously he had had a busy couple of nights. Her earlier decision had made sense at the time, but now being face-to-face with him so soon after their last encounter, she felt a tinge of doubt creeping back into her mind again.

"You do have the option of saying no," he reminded her quietly when she didn't respond after a long pause.

Sarah twisted her fingers around the doorknob as she watched him. There was no point in making a choice and then chickening out of it later, she supposed. She nodded slowly and stepped back from the doorway to allow him through. Once she had redone the locks behind him, she returned to her chair at the table and picked her glass back up. If there was any sure-fire way to help keep her reservations away, it was to drown them in alcohol. Matt didn't take the other chair at the table. Instead, he positioned himself leaning against the wall across the table from her.

"You gave the money back," he said quietly, without any preamble.

_Guess we're jumping right into that conversation._

"Yeah," Sarah said simply.

"Why?" he asked, a tinge of disbelief in his tone.

Sarah wasn't sure how to answer that. She considered telling him what she had found out about the two cops visiting her dad, but that didn't really answer his question. Not trusting the bribe had been what made her realize what her decision had to be, but it wasn't why she had made it. She wasn't sure how to put her reasoning into words quiet yet, so instead she tucked her damp hair behind her ear and tossed back the shot of horrible vodka in her glass, focusing on the warmth it brought to her chest rather than the taste. She made a face as she brought the glass back down.

"What kind of drunk do you get?" she asked suddenly, temporarily ignoring the question he had just posed to her.

Matt's brow furrowed in confusion. "What?"

"You know," she said, grabbing the bottle and pouring a bit more liquor into her glass. "Everyone becomes something when they drink. Are you…a cheerful drunk? Or a sad drunk, or a loud drunk?"

"I guess it depends on why I'm drinking," Matt said after a moment of thinking about it. Sarah considered his answer as she swirled the clear liquid around in her glass.

"I become a talkative drunk," she informed him.

"I remember."

_Right_. Sarah also remembered the last time she'd been drunk in front of Matt, although it was a blurry recollection. She'd been sitting on the kitchen floor, and she couldn't remember half of what she had said, beyond the fact that it was all too personal and too blunt, and some of it had been vaguely inappropriate. She didn't particularly want a repeat of that, but she also really didn't want to stop drinking. Not tonight.

She tilted her head as she looked at him, and an idea occurred to her. She immediately recognized it as a bad one, but her alcohol-fueled brain didn't particularly care. Before she could change her mind, she reached for the bottle of vodka, sliding it across the table towards him. Then she waited.

Matt raised an eyebrow at her, still leaning against the wall and fingering the loop on his cane with one hand. "What are you doing?"

"Well, right now what I'm doing is drinking alone. And if I learned anything from my dad, it's that drinking alone makes you an alcoholic. So…" she gestured clumsily towards the bottle, "I want you to drink with me."

"Sarah, I don't—" Matt began, already shaking his head.

"You said you wanted to talk," she interrupted him adamantly, fueled by a mixture of the alcohol and her adrenaline rush from earlier. "And there's no way I can have this talk with you while you're sober and I'm already three drinks deep. Plus, I'm—I'm guessing your weekend was probably as bad as mine, so…you could probably use it."

There was a long silence. She wasn't sure why she wanted him to drink as well; maybe part of her just wanted to know that he would do it, after she had—begrudgingly—put all of this faith into him. Maybe part of her was just tired of him always being the one with the upper hand all the time.

"Three drinks deep, huh?" Matt repeated quietly, before pressing his lips together in a grimace and looking down. "I'm…guessing that's not because you're celebrating your decision."

Sarah shook her head wordlessly. A shadow of guilt flitted across his face, although she wasn't entirely sure why; she'd have been drinking tonight regardless of which choice she made. Finally he jerked his head in what she assumed was agreement. She uncurled herself from the chair—pausing for a second as it caused her head to rush slightly—and went into the kitchen, where she reached into the cabinet for another glass tumbler like her own. Her fingers hovered over the glass for a few seconds before she reconsidered, reaching instead for the only non-breakable cup in her cabinet: a clear plastic measuring cup. Matt probably wouldn't be pleased with the selection, but she really didn't feel like cleaning up any more glass shards.

When she returned to the room, Matt was sitting in the chair across from her empty one. When she handed him the cup he seemed surprised by the lightness of it, and he ran his fingers over the handle and the rim.

He cocked his head slowly. "This is a plastic measuring cup."

"Just incase your drinking personality is anything like your sober one," she said quietly. She felt a little bad when he visibly winced at the comment, although he made no attempt to refute it.

Matt picked the vodka bottle up and poured a small amount into the plastic cup. Then he paused, the bottle still hovering over the rim, and raised his eyebrows at her questioningly. Sarah blinked in surprise. She wasn't sure why he was giving her control of the situation—when it was almost always the other way around—but she found herself oddly curious to see how far he was going to let her push it. She bit her thumbnail as she studied him, then shook her head silently. He sighed, but filled the cup more before setting the bottle down.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she acknowledged that she was testing him, and that testing a man who had very recently proved himself to be a ticking time bomb was an extremely bad idea, not to mention reckless. Then again, so was drinking cheap vodka with the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, and here she was. She took another swallow of the harsh liquor.

Matt sniffed his drink before making a disgusted face. "That's, uh…definitely bottom shelf stuff."

Sarah's lips quirked up slightly as she examined the clear liquid in her glass. "Worse, I think. If there was, like, a trap door that led to alcohol so cheap that it didn't warrant living on the bottom shelf…that's where you would find this."'

Matt didn't look pleased by that information, but he raised the cup and, to her surprise, downed the contents in one go. He winced slightly, but otherwise took the taste of alcohol gamely, considering how much worse it must have been with his heightened senses. There had to have been several shots in the cup, and Sarah's eyes widened as she registered how much alcohol had just hit his system.

"You're not, uh…you're not still super angry with me, right?" she said nervously.

"No," he said. It was difficult to tell if the slightly pained look on his face was from the alcohol or her question. "I think I got most of that out of my system last night."

Sarah's gaze swept over his newly-bruised knuckles again as he set the empty cup back down.

"Are Sundays really that big of a crime day?" she asked. "I thought everyone was supposed to be resting."

Matt shook his head in disagreement. "People go to church on Sunday, start thinking too much about their sins. Then they take it out on the city."

Sarah wasn't entirely sure if he was talking about the criminals or himself, but she observed the way his face had darkened as he spoke, and it pulled at the tiny thread of nervousness that hadn't been drowned out by the alcohol. The smart part of her brain was telling her this was a good time to stop, that it wasn't too late to not get the scariest person in Hell's Kitchen wasted with absolutely no idea of how it would affect him. But the restless, adrenaline-battered part of her wasn't listening. She straightened up and reached for Matt's cup, then her own. She poured a considerable amount of liquor into both, and saw Matt's eyebrows raise slowly as the level of liquid did the same.

"We're going to play a drinking game," she said resolutely, having very little idea where she was going with this. "But it's probably not going to be fun at all."

"Not really much of a game, then," he pointed out.

"Not really," she agreed.

"How do we play?"

"Well…mostly I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions," she explained, aware of the slight slur in her speech. "And if you don't answer, you have to drink."

There was a pause. "So…when do you have to drink?"

"Oh, I'll be drinking anyway," she assured him. "Don't worry about that."

Matt exhaled a mirthless laugh which bordered on a scoff, wetting his lips as he considered the information.

"Do I get to ask you anything?" he asked finally.

Sarah pursed her lips as she considered the question, then shook her head. "No."

Matt tipped his head back in exasperation, before fixing her with a doubtful look. "And how are you enforcing these rules?"

She shrugged, lifting her bare feet up and tucking them under her so that she was sitting criss-cross in the chair. "I guess I can't."

He leaned back in his chair, tracing his finger around the edge of his cup while Sarah waited for his response. Finally he gave her a vague gesture to go ahead. Sarah was caught off guard by his agreement, and realized she hadn't actually thought about what she would ask him. She found a question tumbling from her lips anyway.

"How much of what that cop told me was true?"

Matt's face darkened, and Sarah wondered with a flutter of nervousness if maybe she should have started with a lighter subject matter. _Too late now._

"You mean his speech about how I'm a coward and a psycho?" Matt asked calmly, though there was a bitter edge to his tone. "Guess it depends on who you ask."

"I mean the people from the photographs. How…how much of that did you actually do?" she asked hesitantly.

Matt looked conflicted as he traced the edge of his cup without speaking for a minute.

"Are you sure that this is something you want to hear about?" he asked carefully.

"Yes?" she replied, not intending for it to come out like a question, but it did anyway.

He looked unconvinced by her answer, but simply shook his head and leaned forward to rest both arms on the table before answering. "I didn't kill Anatoly Ranskahov. Fisk did. He left a black mask there to frame me while he was planning to blow up the Russians."

Sarah almost wanted to laugh at how matter-of-fact he spoke about these things, as though they were all normal, everyday occurrences. Except that it wasn't funny.

"What about the others he showed me? The—the one with the stab wound. And the other guy. With the broken arms. Did you…" she trailed off uncertainly.

"Torture them?" Matt finished calmly after a short silence. "Yes."

Sarah inhaled deeply at that. Her head felt like it was spinning slightly, although it was difficult to tell if that was from the alcohol or the conversation. The information itself wasn't surprising—after all, Matt had been torturing Yates the first time she'd ever seen him—but it was still unsettling to hear out loud.

Matt clearly picked up on how his candid answer had affected her. He frowned as he undoubtedly heard her heartbeat increase slightly.

"You said you wanted to know," he reminded her.

"Yeah…I guess I did," she agreed faintly.

Matt took the vodka bottle and refilled his glass, before tipping it towards Sarah's glass and pausing. She nodded, and he filled it before setting the bottle aside again.

"Do you want to stop?" he asked quietly.

She shook her head adamantly, then reached for the folder that Officer McDermott had left. Matt took another drink as she pulled out the photo that had been bothering her most, of the mangled body embedded in the sidewalk. She laid it down in front of Matt despite knowing he couldn't see it.

"This…this guy. The junkie who flew off the roof." It wasn't technically a question, but she knew he'd understand what she was asking.

His jaw tensed up at the mention of the man, and Sarah immediately knew that the heroin-addled roommate had been correct when he said Daredevil had been there that night.

"I didn't kill him, if that's what you want to know," Matt said darkly. "Doesn't mean I didn't hurt him."

"Why?" she whispered. "What did he do?"

Matt was quiet for so long that Sarah almost thought he wasn't going to answer. Then he reached up and took his dark glasses off, bringing them down to rest on the table. He kept one hand on the glasses while with the other he tapped his index finger against the measuring cup he held. The agitated tapping might have alarmed her had he not taken his glasses off just then, allowing her a glimpse at the sadness and guilt that accompanied the anger on his face.

"He murdered someone. An old woman who Foggy and I were representing, who—who I was supposed to be protecting. He killed her because Fisk wanted to draw me out." Matt's scowl twisted into a bitter smile. "And I didn't hurt him half as bad as he deserved. If I hadn't had a more important goal that night I'd have stuck around with him a little longer."

There was a long silence as his words hung in the air. Part of Sarah desperately wanted to end the drinking game and stop asking questions, stop getting answers that only made Matt's dark side even clearer. But a stronger part of her was curious, and wanted to know more no matter how quickly it made her pulse jump.

"Do you…do you like it? Hurting people?" she asked tentatively.

A strange sadness flashed across Matt's face, and he didn't answer right away. Sarah had no way of knowing how much her question reminded him of another one posed to him by someone else, not too long ago. And how badly that had ended. He moved his mouth like he was going to answer, then paused, wet his lips, and brought the glass up to take a deep swallow. Of all the questions he could have chosen not to answer, Sarah wished it hadn't been that one. It was a few minutes before he broke the silence.

"Do you have more questions?"

Sarah had a lot more questions. She had a whole folder full of photos that held nothing but questions, possibly with answers she didn't want to know yet. She studied his face, which she so rarely got to see without the dark glasses or mask in the way. A question she'd had a long time ago came to her head.

"How old are you?" she asked curiously.

"You couldn't Google that one?" he asked nonchalantly, but she could tell he was thrown by the question.

"I've been told I can't use electronics when I'm drinking," she replied simply.

Matt looked unimpressed by her reasoning, and sighed deeply before answering. "I'm twenty-eight."

"You seem older," she noted, observing him over the top of her drinking glass.

He lifted his eyebrows at the comment, but didn't say anything about it. "Do I get to ask how old you are?"

"You can't tell? Your…super whatever can't guess ages?" she asked, motioning her hands in what she thought was a vaguely mystical way.

"I can ballpark it," he said. "Nothing exact."

She nodded, looking at him for a long moment. "Twenty-six."

Matt leaned back in his chair, gazing unseeingly at the clear liquid in his cup for a little while. When he spoke again, his voice had grown serious once more. "The things that officer told you…they got to you."

"Kind of," she admitted, eying Matt warily, but he showed no reaction.

"So why not tell him right then?"

Sarah struggled to try to form what she wanted to say into the right words. "I don't like people who do that. Who get in my head like that. I don't trust them. He was just…trying _so_ hard to get me to believe what he was saying. It felt—I don't know. Manipulative, I guess. Jason does the same thing. It's like…they think if they're really nice to me, I won't even notice that they're not actually trying to help me. Like I can't tell the difference between nice and good."

"So…the nicer people are to you, the _less_ you trust them," Matt said contemplatively, leaning his head back against the wall behind his chair with a faint, crooked grin. "Must be why you're sitting here with me."

"You're not always the…friendliest company," she acknowledged, picking her words carefully. "But at least you're straightforward about it."

Matt gave her an odd look that she couldn't read. She shrugged and took a drink of the vodka, forgetting to toss it back quickly. The taste of it flooded her tongue, and she made a face. "Ugh. This really is bad. It tastes like nail polish remover."

"Why are we drinking it, then?"

"I don't know," she said. But she did know, and the words came pouring out of her mouth anyway, painfully honest in the way only drinking made her. "Because I'm mad at you. For not having any faith in me. And I'm mad at myself. For not turning you in, and—and also for ever considering turning you in to begin with. So now we both have to sit here and drink bad liquor. That's just…the rules."

Matt gave a startled laugh. "You…you're joking, right?"

"No," she said, giving him an offended look. "If I was joking, you'd know. I'm a very funny person."

" _Why_ would you feel guilty for thinking about turning me in? After…?" he trailed off. Neither of them needed him to finish his sentence.

Sarah chewed her lip as she thought about it. "Because it was selfish. You…you scare the _hell_ out of me sometimes, Matt. But you help people. And…you hurt people too; I know that, I'm not dumb. But mostly you help. And if I turned you in, I'd be taking that help away from people who need it, just—just to help myself. And that's…not the kind of person that I like to think I am. Not the person I hope I am."

"You wouldn't have only been helping yourself. You could have paid off your father's debt," he pointed out. "Gotten him out of town."

"And then what? You go to prison and I start over in, like, Iceland or somewhere, and everything here in Hell's Kitchen just…stays the same. Orion still gets to make money off of hurting people, only now with no one trying to stop them," she said hopelessly, before leaning forward over her glass of vodka, which she kept clasped in both hands as she fixed Matt with an searching look. "Do you really think anyone else is going to step up and try and bring them down besides you? Or actually have a chance in Hell of doing it?"

Matt's expression was difficult to read as he took a drink. She followed suit.

"Things are going to get more complicated now," he pointed out. "You know that, right?"

Sarah thought of the cops watching her dad, of Jason and his mysterious phone calls, of the list of names she'd seen at the precinct. All things that made the situation even more complicated than Matt knew. But things they could talk about tomorrow.

"It's not like things were ever all that simple," she said finally.

"You seem pretty calm about it," he said. She wondered if he was thinking about her panic attack a few days prior.

Sarah leaned back, letting her head tip backwards so that she was staring at the ceiling. "Well, I've been sort of low-key panicking for the last…three days straight? At some point you just run out of energy. I mean, if Orion or the police are going to come after me, then I guess they will. Not much that I can do to stop it."

"I won't let that happen," Matt argued. "To you or your dad."

She brought her head back up to look at him, ignoring the dizzy sensation that the movement caused.

"You never brought him up," she said after a pause. "My dad, I mean. When they made me that offer."

"I told you a long time ago that I wasn't going to go after your father," he replied simply. "It wasn't contingent on you keeping my secret."

Sarah swallowed hard, unable to respond. When she remained silent, Matt slid forward in his chair a little, leaning forward intently.

"I know that you took a big risk today, not turning me in," he said slowly. "Don't think that I don't understand what you passed up. But I'll keep you and your dad safe. I owe you that much."

Sarah watched him closely, trying to decide if she believed him. Emboldened by the alcohol pumping through her bloodstream, she hesitantly reached out and lightly pressed two fingers against the pulse point on Matt's throat, just below his jaw. His skin was warm from the alcohol, and he hadn't shaved in a few days, so his facial hair felt rough. He stayed very still, his face carefully composed, but his unfocused eyes were alert and trained directly on her.

"So…when do I magically know if you mean it?"

"I don't think it really works like that," he said softly. She could feel his low voice vibrate under her fingers as it traveled up his throat.

"That's not fair," she whispered.

"I know."

She held her fingers to his pulse for another moment, during which she could have sworn his heartbeat was faster than a normal one—but she was drunk, and out of the two of them she wasn't the one who could read a heartbeat like a book. She let her hand fall back down to her lap and looked at him sadly.

"So, when I tell you that I'm not going to turn you in, you know I'm telling you the truth. But you could lie to me all day long and I wouldn't be able to tell."

Matt turned his attention back to his drink, contemplating her words. "Do you think I am? Lying to you?"

Sarah looked away from him uncertainly, running her finger around the rim of her glass.

"I thought you didn't get to ask any questions," she said finally.

"Are we still playing the game?"

Sarah resumed fidgeting with her damp hair as she watched him contemplatively, waiting for the rational part of her brain to tell her that she shouldn't believe him. It didn't come. Exhaling deeply, she got up and went into the kitchen, where she grabbed a glass tumbler from the cupboard. She returned to the table and set it down in front of Matt.

He reached out and touched the glass, looking bewildered for a moment before a small smile tugged at his lips.

"Please don't throw it," she told him. "I only own so many dishes that don't have weird shit drawn on them."

Matt nodded as he poured the rest of his alcohol out of the cup and into the glass. He raised his glass slightly and Sarah mirrored him, then they both drank. When Matt brought his glass back down he looked oddly torn.

"I'm sorry about that night," he said quietly. "What I did."

"It wasn't really a nice mug," she admitted. "I think I got it for subscribing to a magazine."

"Not just the mug," he said pointedly. "I know that I—I undid any sort of trust we might have had in the span of about five minutes. I'm sorry about that. I don't…want to go back to what we used to be."

"Then don't act like you used to," she replied, then softened slightly at the guilt that passed across his face again. "And…I'll try not to either. Starting now. It'll be a drinking pact."

Matt grinned weakly, but tilted his head at the empty vodka bottle. "I think we're all out."

Sarah was briefly disappointed, until an idea occurred to her which made her laugh softly, but which she also felt oddly compelled to carry out. Unsteadily, she held her hand out with her pinky extended, resting her elbow on the table. Matt wrinkled his brow at the action, and she waited expectantly.

"You know what a pinky promise is, don't you?" she prompted.

"I know what one is, yeah," he said, raising an eyebrow. "I haven't made one since I was about seven."

"Well, then you're overdue, I think," she said stubbornly.

Matt looked thoroughly unconvinced. Sarah exhaled lowly in disappointment and she was about to pull her hand away when he reached out and caught her pinky finger with his own, linking the two. She looked down at their hands. The pact didn't look like a child's pinky promise—between his bloody and bruised knuckles and the white, raised scars across her palm—but it did the trick. Tomorrow they could deal with the cops and Orion and every other problem they had. Tonight, Sarah just desperately wanted to feel like someone was on her side, and sitting there with Matt and their two empty glasses, she finally felt like he was.


	16. Meetings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone! First off, JESSICA JONES, y'all. I'm all finished with it, so if you've watched it let me know what you think! But please try not to post any spoilers in the reviews, because I know you guys like to read each others' reviews and some of you might be total slackers who haven't seen it all yet.
> 
> Next: FFN author whodahoe made some excellent photoshop fan art for this story! You can find it here:
> 
> http://who-da-hoe.tumblr.com/post/133854400023/sarah-corrigan-is-a-secretary-at-orion-inc-a
> 
> LASTLY, the next time I post will not be this story, but rather the Christmas one-shot companion to it, probably in about two weeks. So make sure you keep an eye out for that, and then the next chapter of WTWD will be up shortly after that!
> 
> (Kindly forgive any typos, I wanted to get this chapter up ASAP so I haven't had a chance to run it by my beta. I'll fix them later.)

Sarah woke up the next morning to the sound of her front door slamming and a familiar female voice calling out her name.

"Sarah! Time to get up, we have a baby shower to finish planning!"

She covered her pounding head with her pillow and groaned; even from the next room, Lauren's voice seemed excessively loud this morning. She didn't bother moving when she heard her bedroom door open.

"Do you realize your apartment smells like a frat house?"

Sarah slide the pillow off her face and inhaled, then almost gagged as she smelled the stale scent of cheap vodka in the air.

"Oh, god," she said, wrinkling her nose. "It does."

Lauren made a face as she came to stand next to Sarah's bed. "Scratch that, it's you. _You_ smell like a frat house. Partying hard last night?

"I would definitely not classify it as partying. And I didn't drink that much," Sarah lied, a wave of nausea hitting her as she sat up slowly. She clamped her mouth shut for a few seconds as she waited for it to pass. Lauren raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"Are you sure? Because you smell so strongly of alcohol right now that I'm worried just breathing the same air as you will give my kid fetal alcohol syndrome."

"That's not how that works."

"Well, if Child Protective Services shows up at my door, I'm directing them to your inebriated ass," Lauren informed her.

"It's too early for you to be dramatic," Sarah groaned. "Why are you here, anyway?"

Lauren gave her a thoroughly unimpressed look. "We need to finish planning the baby shower that's in less than two weeks, and you said that I could come over today to take a final look at what you put together. Remember?"

Sarah scrunched her face up guiltily as she searched her memory of the night before. She remembered the beginning of the night clearly. She and Matt had finished the entire bottle of vodka between them, and when he left it had still been surprisingly early in the evening. As always, it wasn't until she was done drinking that the full effect of the alcohol had hit her. She vaguely remembered receiving a text from Lauren asking if she was free to do baby shower planning the next night.

"I thought you said you were coming over sometime around…later than now? Nighttime?" Sarah asked blurrily, rubbing her eyes. Her mouth was dry and her head felt like it would explode.

"I did. Then you told me you had today off, so I asked if we could meet up in the morning. And you said, and I quote…" Lauren began, scrolling through her texts on her phone, "'Come over whenever you want.' Then you said, 'Please bring me a grilled cheese.' And finally, 'Don't ever let your baby get drunk.'"

"Well…that seems like good advice," Sarah defended, then after a pause she added hopefully, "Did you bring me a grilled cheese?"

"No."

Sarah huffed and leaned her head back against the headboard. "You show up here at the crack of dawn, being loud as hell, and you don't even bring me a sandwich."

"Crack of dawn?" Lauren laughed and leaned around Sarah's nightstand so that she could reach the curtains, which she yanked aside. Bright sunlight streamed in and Sarah cringed and brought her blanket up over her eyes. "Hate to break it to you, sunshine, but it's past noon."

"You're a monster and I'm taking your key away," Sarah grumbled into the blanket.

"Okay, how about we go to the diner on the corner to do the planning, and I'll buy you a grilled cheese there," Lauren offered. "It'll help your hangover."

Sarah nodded grudgingly before untangling herself from her covers and struggling out of bed. When she stepped foot into the living room, the smell of vodka only got stronger, which didn't help her already queasy stomach. Her eyes landed on the dining room table, where the folder of graphic photos was still laying open, with the photo of the addict she had been questioning Matt about still sitting in plain sight. She hastened over to the table and grabbed the photo, intending to stuff it into the folder. She hadn't looked at any of the photos beyond the one with the addict—the flattened body on the sidewalk had been graphic enough—so she was startled to see a familiar face in the photo that had been beneath it: James Wesley, the man who had roped her into this situation in the first place. In the photo he was slumped over in a chair with several large red spots blooming through the front of his white dress shirt. She stared at it in shock.

"What are you looking at?" Lauren asked curiously from across the room. She started walking over to the table, causing Sarah to snap out of her state. She hastily placed the photo of the addict on top of the stack, covering the photo of Wesley, and snapped the folder shut.

"Bills," she said quickly. She shoved the folder into her large purse and turned back to Lauren, determined to push the jarring photo out of her mind. She hadn't liked Wesley in the slightest, but she also hadn't been expecting to see a photo of his dead body first thing in the morning.

Her friend gave her a slightly doubtful look, which Sarah pointedly ignored as she threw her purse into her bedroom. Returning to the living room, she opened the window to let some fresh air in before shuffling into the kitchen to turn on the coffee maker. Lauren remained lingering near the table, where she cast a significant look at the two tumblers still sitting next to the empty bottle of vodka. "Well, at least you weren't drinking alone. Who was your lucky drinking buddy?"

"Hmm? Oh, um—no one. A friend," Sarah said distractedly, then shook her head and corrected herself. "Not a friend. A person. That I know."

Lauren rolled her eyes. "That clears things up. Is this friend-not-a-friend anyone that I know?"

Sarah shook her head as she messed with the buttons on the ancient coffee machine, trying to get it to work properly. It just made a weak whirring noise.

"Were you guys measuring your shots or something?"

"What?" Sarah asked confusedly, before turning around to see Lauren holding up the measuring cup—which also undoubtedly reeked of liquor—with a questioning look on her face.

"Oh. Uh…yes. Yes, we were," Sarah lied. At Lauren's dubious expression, she continued. "They're supposed to be exactly one and a half ounces, you know."

"How very meticulous of you."

"One of the lead causes of binge-drinking is not knowing how much a proper shot is," Sarah told her innocently.

Lauren scoffed, picked up the empty bottle and dangled it upside down. "Yeah, wouldn't to drink too much."

"This coffee maker is not going to do its job," Sarah said, purposefully changing the subject. "I'll get some at the diner. Are you ready to go?"

Fifteen minutes later, after Sarah had brushed her teeth and changed out of her rumpled sleep clothes, she and Lauren entered the old diner on the corner of Sarah's block. A waitress approached them as Sarah helped Lauren slide into the booth before settling into her seat on the other side. She placed her order of grilled cheese and coffee, and the waitress turned expectantly to Lauren, who was eyeing the menu thoughtfully.

"I'll take pancakes," she decided.

"You want maple syrup or blueberry?"

"Neither," Lauren said slowly, frowning at the menu before looking up at the woman. "Do you have onions?"

The waitress stared at her blankly. "Onions?"

"Yeah. Or, like, chives?"

"With your pancakes?" the waitress asked doubtfully, looking over at Sarah for confirmation. Sarah just nodded at her seriously, and the waitress rolled her eyes and wrote down the order before walking away. Once the two of them were alone again, Sarah pulled her notebook out of her bag. She had been using her lunch breaks to make invitations and her subway commute to plan the menu and activities, and surprisingly had managed to pull together a halfway decent plan for the shower.

"Okay, this is the list of people I invited. Take a look at it and make sure I didn't miss anyone, or invite anyone you actually hate," Sarah said, handing the list to Lauren. "Why do you know so many people whose names begin with Mary? Mary-Kate, Mary-Louise, Mary-Margaret, Mary-Jo…"

Lauren shrugged and sipped her water. "Lot of Irish girls in my old sorority. Speaking of both sororities and the Irish—there will be booze there, right? I mean, not for me, obviously. But for everyone else."

"I cannot talk about alcohol right now," Sarah complained as her stomach turned in protest of the subject.

"You _have_ to talk about alcohol right now. The party is in like ten days and a good two thirds of that guest list will not show up unless there are mimosas involved."

"Of course there will be mimosas, do you think I'm going to sit through a whole party with your mother there and no alcohol to numb the experience?"

"Fair enough. I was thinking we could make a drinking game out of how many times she manages to bring up things that she dislikes about Greg. Like, take a drink every time she…" Lauren's words trailed off as she looked down at the table and raised her eyebrows. "Who is _that?_ "

Sarah gave her a confused look before following her gaze to her phone, which she had accidentally set to silent. The only indication that it was ringing was the tiny devil emoticon in the center of the screen. Remembering the last time Matt had called her while Lauren was present, Sarah snatched the phone before her friend could.

"Hello?" she said.

"Who is it?" Lauren whispered, and Sarah ignored her.

"Did I wake you up?" Matt asked over the line, presumably picking up on the sleepy rasp that still hadn't been chased away by coffee. Sarah frowned at the faint amusement in his voice.

"No," she indignantly. "It's one in the afternoon, I was already awake."

"You've only been awake for forty-five minutes," Lauren pointed out helpfully.

Sarah batted her hand at her friend in annoyance, idly wondering how well Matt's senses worked over the phone. Could he pick up on background noises as easily as he could in person, or was he limited by how powerful the cell's microphone was?

"Are you with someone right now?"

"Um, yeah," she said, narrowing her eyes at Lauren, who was trying to lean across the table to hear more of the conversation, but was prevented from doing so by her oversized stomach. "But I can step outside."

Lauren shot her an offended look. "What? You came here to help me with planning and now you're abandoning me?"

Sarah covered the mouthpiece of the cell phone, and pushed the notebook towards Lauren. "I'm literally going to be right outside for like, five minutes. Here, look at this list of foods and cross off everything that makes you throw up nowadays. I can't keep track."

With that she slid out of the booth and towards the exit, looking behind her to see Lauren examining the list and already shaking her head while crossing several items off. Sarah stepped outside and whined slightly at how bright it was; she'd left her sunglasses on the booth inside.

"Hungover?" Matt asked at her pained noise.

"I feel like I got hit by a bus," she told him, leaning back against the front window of the diner. "You?"

"About the same. I was just…returning your call," he said.

Sarah stomach dropped slightly. She had called Matt? When? She scrunched her eyes closed, both to block out the sun and in an effort to remember the night before. Sure enough, a fuzzy memory of calling him after he left floated to her mind, though for the life of her she couldn't recall what she had intended to say. Thankfully it sounded like he hadn't answered.

"Sarah?" Matt's voice brought her out of her mental self-reprimand.

"Yeah?"

"I asked if I could come over later to talk about what the plan is for you going back to Orion tomorrow."

"Oh. Yeah, that's fine," she said absently, then changed her mind. "Actually, my apartment still kind of smells like cheap vodka. What about your place?"

Matt didn't mind the relocation, and they agreed upon a time to meet before hanging up the phone. Sarah's headache was in full force by the time she stepped out of the bright sunshine and back into the diner.

"Casual afternoon call from Satan?" Lauren inquired as Sarah slid into the booth. Sarah winced, dismayed by how perceptive her best friend constantly proved herself to be.

"It's—it's just an inside joke," she lied weakly. _And the punchline is that I'm working with—and occasionally getting very drunk with—a dangerous and unpredictable vigilante. Isn't that funny?_

Lauren eyed her with a mixture of concern and skepticism, but apparently the phone call hadn't been alarming enough to warrant a lecture, because she merely slid the food list back across the table to Sarah. "I crossed out all of the stuff that will make me vomit all over whatever dumbass slogan onesies and Pinterest crafts people will show up with."

"Why are you having a baby shower if you already think you'll hate all of the gifts?" Sarah asked in exasperation.

"It's _free stuff_ , Sarah," Lauren said insistently. "I don't have to _like_ the stuff, I just have to _obtain_ it. It's tradition. Besides, I know I'll like whatever you get me, which is all that matters. You're an excellent gift-giver."

"So I should return the onesie that says 'My Mom Is A MILF?'"

"Don't joke. You remember Amelia Wendell? She posted an Instagram the other day of her baby wearing a shirt that said 'Free Hugs.'" Lauren threw up her hands in disapproval. "Free hugs? Why would you encourage random strangers to touch your baby? It's bad enough when people I don't know want to touch my stomach, much less my actual child."

The waitress came back with Sarah's grilled cheese and black coffee, along with Lauren's confusing order of pancakes and sliced onions. Sarah wrinkled her nose in disgust as her friend happily began eating the combination, but the nausea and headache from her hangover slowly receded as the two of them continued their shower planning over their food.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Later that evening, after returning to her apartment to shower and do all of the chores she had neglected over the weekend, Sarah began walking over to Matt's apartment. On the way there, she contemplated whether it would be awkward to see him without the haze of alcohol to dull the tension. They'd been getting along surprisingly well until the cops had messed everything up, and now after their night of drinking she found that she wasn't quite sure where they stood.

She was standing at an intersection and fiddling with the music selection on her phone when she felt a strange prickling sensation go down the back of her neck, as though she was being watched. Her head snapped up and she looked around her, searching the crowd for—who? There were so many possibilities these days. Jason? Ronan? The cops? Or maybe someone whose face she didn't know yet. She didn't see anyone acting out of the ordinary, save for the elderly couple behind her who huffed in annoyance that she didn't immediately cross the street when the walk sign came on.

Sarah shook her head, reminding herself to watch her coffee intake better—it always made her jumpy. A small part of her brain hesitated as she approached Matt's building, wondering if it wasn't such a good idea to go inside. But as far as anyone knew, Matt was just her lawyer. It wasn't that unusual for her to be meeting with him a few days after being brought into the police station, she reassured herself. But the feeling of being watched stuck with her right up until she stepped into the lobby of his building.

She knocked on Matt's door, but there was no answer. She frowned, not bothering to knock again; it's not like he wouldn't have heard her the first time if he was home. She waited for a few more minutes, and was just about to fish her phone out of her pocket to call him when she heard a voice from behind her.

"You're a little early."

Sarah, still slightly on edge from earlier, stifled a surprised yelp as she whipped around. She hadn't even heard Matt come up the stairs.

"Oh. I, uh…guess I was walking faster than I thought," she muttered as her heart rate returned to normal.

Matt's face flickered slightly at her tense reaction, but he didn't say anything about it. He stepped around her to unlock the door, holding it open so she could go inside. She crossed her arms and looked around his living room while he slipped his jacket off in the hallway behind her. The giant billboard outside his window flashed, and she watched it idly as he brushed past her to enter the kitchen.

"You want something to drink? Maybe something…non-alcoholic," he suggested as he turned on the faucet and poured some water into a glass.

"Non-alcoholic sounds good for the next ten years or so," Sarah agreed, coming over to lean against the opposite side of the counter. "Which should be around the time my hangover finally fades completely."

He grinned as he handed her the glass of water. "I figured from the voicemail you left that you might not feel excellent this morning. It's why I waited til later to call you back."

Sarah blinked, thrown by this information. _Voicemail? Shit. No more using my phone while drunk._

"Yes," she said falteringly. "The voicemail…from when I called you. On the telephone."

"My burner was charging in my apartment, so I didn't check it until this morning."

"Mhm," Sarah murmured, drinking from the glass of water as she tried to remember leaving any sort of message on Matt's phone.

"You have no idea what I'm talking about."

She winced guiltily. "I'm sorry. I told you I shouldn't use electronics when I've been drinking. Was it embarrassing?"

"No. It wasn't that bad," he assured her, but way his lips twitched up made her think otherwise.

Sarah just hummed disbelievingly.

Matt shook his head, but he looked amused as he pulled his burner phone out of the inner pocket of his suit jacket, flipping it open and pressing a succession of memorized buttons. Then he handed the phone to her to listen to the message. Sarah held it up to her ear hesitantly. After a few seconds, she heard her own voice come through the phone, tired and clearly intoxicated but still comprehensible.

"Hi," Phone Sarah began, and there was such a long pause afterwards that Sarah began to wonder if she had drunkenly left him a one-word voicemail. "So, I think that I meant to say this before you left, but um…I hope you aren't going out tonight. I mean, I just—I'll feel bad if I made you get completely sloshed and then you went out and got—like—scaffold-ed again. It's a Monday. People don't commit crimes on Mondays. You could probably take the night off—shit." Phone Sarah's voice became slightly farther away. "I just spilled my water everywhere. Dammit. What was I saying? I don't know. Anyway, the other reason I called was just to say…I'm glad you came over tonight. I, um, I like it better…when we're on the same side. Okay. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Bye." Matt held up a finger as the message apparently ended, so Sarah waited. Sure enough, there was a clattering sound as Drunk Phone Sarah dropped her cell phone, then she heard her very muffled voice—"Goddamn everything"—before the line finally clicked off.

Sarah closed her eyes as the message ended, shutting out the view of Matt and the vaguely amused smirk on his face.

"That's embarrassing," she muttered.

"I liked it," he replied. "I'd never heard someone try to use scaffolding as a verb like that before."

"Very funny."

"Lot of strong language, though."

Sarah groaned, frowning down at the buttons on the ancient cell phone. "How do I delete this mess?"

Matt chuckled lightly, holding his hand out for the phone. "I'll delete it later."

She dropped the phone into his open palm and he pocketed it again.

"Moving on from _that_ ," she said firmly, eager to turn attention away from her drunken self and the uncomfortable honesty that always accompanied it, "I have a lot to catch you up on."

Matt gestured towards the living room, indicating that she should sit. Sarah settled on the couch, tucking one leg underneath her. She noticed that Matt moved to sit on the couch next to her, then after a moment's hesitation took the arm chair across the table from her instead. Her first thought was that he was trying to give her space due to his actions the night she had been offered the bribe. She recalled how oddly close they'd been sitting the night before—close enough for her to reach out and feel his pulse—and she found herself again noting the difference between moving past something while drunk and trying to do the same while sober. Conversations about drunken voicemails were easy, but that didn't mean everything was fine.

Pushing the thoughts aside, Sarah filled Matt in on the things she hadn't told him last night: Jason's weird behavior during his phone call, her father recognizing the two cops as the fake Jehovah's Witnesses, the list of names on McDermott's desk.

"Who was on the list?"

"Orion employees," she told him. "Four of them, plus me. I guess people that they think might be connected to you?"

Matt frowned. "What are the names?"

Sarah swiped through the photos on her phone until she got to the one she had snapped in the police station. She rattled the names off to him, then glanced up from the screen to see him frowning, apparently not recognizing any of the names on the list.

"They don't ring any bells."

"So, you don't have a whole network of spies running around Orion? Because that'd be kind of impressive."

He cracked a small grin at that as he shook his head no. "One is enough trouble."

Sarah narrowed her eyes at him, not sure if she should be offended or not.

"Speaking of trouble…what about the cops and my dad? You don't think they'll go back to his place, do you?"

Matt considered it, then shook his head. "I don't think so. If they were really that certain that you were the one working with me, they would have already gone after him. They wouldn't have messed around with bribes."

She nodded and looked down, not as confident in that theory as he was.

"I'll still keep an eye on his place, just in case," he promised. "But I don't think that's the way they'll go. Five names on that list…Orion can't afford to go after the families of each person on the off-chance that they're the guilty one. It'd bring too much attention and suspicion. It's easier to just offer the bribe to everyone and see who takes it."

"So all of that with the photos and bringing me down to the station…you think they did that to everyone on the list?"

Matt leaned forward, wetting his lips before speaking carefully. "I think that you work in close contact with the head of Orion security, and you've been involved in two major encounters with Daredevil on company premises. So they might be watching you a little more closely than the others on that list."

Sarah's heart sank. She'd been hoping that the list of names meant that there wasn't as much suspicion leveled against her as she had previously thought. "Yeah. That makes sense."

"So I guess the question is, what happens now that you turned the bribe down? Do they believe you and drop it, or do they push harder?"

"Honestly, I'm not sure they've been keeping Jason updated on it at all," Sarah admitted. "He seemed so frazzled by whatever calls he was getting yesterday that he barely gave me a second glance."

"That's a good thing," Matt said. "Let's hope it stays that way."

"I guess we'll see when I go to work tomorrow," she said, trying to keep her tone light, but the nervousness ebbed through.

Matt was quiet for a moment

"Just use your best judgment. If it seems wrong…get out of there. Call me. On either phone."

Sarah chewed her lip and nodded, trying to ignore the slight twist of anxiety in her stomach. They continued discussing the new information for a while, but they were just going in circles; until she went into work the next day, there was no way of knowing where they stood with anything.

"I should probably go," Sarah said eventually, tired of thinking about the unpleasant day she had in store for her tomorrow. "Are you going out tonight?"

"I don't know," he said with a smirk, leaning back in his chair. "Do people commit crimes on Tuesdays?"

Sarah groaned and ran a hand over her face, muffling her response. "I'm probably about to if you keep bringing that voicemail up."

The smirk didn't leave his face, but he nodded and answered her original question. "I am going out. Not for a another couple of hours, though. I have paperwork to do."

Sarah slid her hand off her face and gave him an odd look. "You live a weird life, you know. Paperwork followed by masked crime-fighting."

"It's unorthodox, I'll give you that," Matt said, standing and striding over to the kitchen counter, where he picked up his regular cell phone. "I'll call you a cab."

"No, no, I can walk," Sarah protested. A cab from Matt's place actually wouldn't be that expensive—definitely not as expensive as a cab from her father's apartment—but she felt odd having him pay for one anyway, especially since she had been the one who had suggested meeting at his place.

"It's getting dark out," Matt said.

"How do you know? Can you _hear_ the sun setting?" Sarah muttered. Matt gave a short laugh but didn't offer an explanation.

"I'll call you a cab," he repeated firmly.

Sarah watched him carefully, unable to figure out his motivations, as usual. Was he more concerned about Orion's watchful eyes than he let on, or was he just acting out of lingering guilt over the other night? Whichever it was, her mind flashed to the feeling of being followed she had experienced earlier, and she reluctantly agreed. "Alright. Thank you."

They both carefully steered the conversation away from work as she waited for the cab to arrive, which was about ten minutes after Matt ordered it. He let her out the front door and she was halfway to the staircase when she heard his voice behind her.

"Hey," he called after her from his position leaning against the doorway, and she turned around, readjusting her bag as she threw him a questioning look. "For what it's worth…I agree with what you said in your voicemail."

"That…people don't commit crimes on Mondays?" she asked confusedly.

He chuckled slightly and shook his head. "Not that part. That made zero sense. I meant the bit at the end."

Sarah furrowed her brow as she recalled the message he'd replayed for her. She smiled warmly at him when realized what he meant. "Good to know."

Much like the pinky promise had, his words helped make her feel less alone as she got in the cab to go home. In fact, her good mood lasted throughout the night, to the point where she didn't even notice that she was being watched again as she entered her building.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The next day, Sarah waited for the other shoe to drop. But it didn't. Jason was in and out of the building most of the day, barely acknowledging her until he called her into his office shortly before her lunch break. She opened the door hesitantly, choosing to linger in the doorway rather than actually enter the room. Jason barely paused from the forms he was filling out.

"After you finish up whatever you're working on, I need you to take those packages to the post office. You can use your lunch break to go so that you don't get behind on your work," he said pleasantly, as though giving her a chore to do during her break time was doing her a favor. She glanced over at the stack of small boxes in the corner.

"Sure," she said warily, still put on edge by the apparent lack of any knowledge of the bribe on his part. He was acting completely normal—although normal by Jason's standards was still fairly unsettling and odd—but Sarah was having a difficult time buying it. She turned to leave the room, and he called out after her.

"One more thing. You'll be spending most of the day outside of the office tomorrow. You probably won't want to wear heels. You haven't forgotten how to drive a stick shift, have you? I know it's been a while, but I hear it's like riding a bike."

Sarah was taken aback by the question. She did know how to drive a stick shift—her father had taught her as a teenager—but she had never owned a manual car, nor had she ever mentioned to anyone at work that she knew how to drive one.

"How do you know that?" she asked him slowly.

Jason continued writing out the forms, not bothering to look up at her. "You'd be shocked at how detailed my employee records are, Sarah."

He gave her no more explanation, but as usual, something in his tone made her think he meant more than he was saying. But there was nothing she could do to address it at the moment, so instead she simply nodded and returned to her desk. As she settled into the creaky office chair and brought up her email, she could only imagine what a employee file on her might say: _Can drive a manual transmission. Former pianist. Often stutters. Currently working with the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. Enjoys tea._

Her fingers stilled over the keyboard. If Jason had detailed files on her, he probably had them on the other four employees on the list. Files that might indicate why he suspected them of being involved with Daredevil. He might even still have files on Yates, and by some long shot it might help her figure out why he had been killed, or by whom. Of course, that was assuming that she would ever manage to access Jason's files, which seemed doubtful to say the least. Despite that, she filed the idea away for later.

A delay on the subway combined with a two block detour to get around a construction site left Sarah waiting at the end of a long line at the post office with only about ten minutes left on her lunch break. She stood on her tiptoes, trying to see around the blonde woman standing in front of her—and the ten or eleven people standing in front of the blonde woman—to see what the hold up was. The only employee working behind the computer looked to be roughly two hundred years old, and was moving at a painfully slow pace. She checked her watch nervously. Maybe Jason would be too busy to notice if she was a little late coming back.

She had no such luck. No more than two minutes after the time she was supposed to have returned, her phone rang. Jason was on the other end, calmly inquiring as to where she was. She apologetically tried to explain about the subway delay, but he seemed disinterested. He simply instructed her to return to the office as soon as possible after dropping off the packages, then promptly hung up.

Sarah rolled her eyes as she juggled the boxes in her arms, trying to slip her phone back into her purse.

"You can go in front of me, if you want," said a tentative voice in front of her.

Sarah looked up from her phone to see that the blonde woman in front of her had turned around to face her, and was smiling sympathetically.

"I wasn't trying to eavesdrop," the woman said apologetically. "But it sounded like your boss wasn't happy you were going to be late. I don't know how much time it'll save you, but by all means…" she gestured for Sarah to cut in front of her.

"Thank you so much," Sarah said gratefully, skirting around her as she balanced the boxes she was carrying. "I didn't realize there would be such a long line or I would have tried to get here earlier. My boss is kind of a punctuality freak."

"I get it. I used to work for a big company that had a lot of those kind of egos at the top; I know how stressful it can be."

"But not anymore?"

"No. The place I work at now is small—like, really small. There are only three of us. So I can pretty much take as much time as I want so long as I stop and get Chinese food for lunch on the way back," the blonde woman said jokingly.

Sarah smiled back at her. After spending all day with dour Orion employees or faux-cheerful Jason, talking to someone who was being genuinely friendly was oddly refreshing. "I'm Sarah," she found herself saying.

"Karen," the woman replied.

"There's, um, a good noodle house down the block from here that you should try. They just opened up a couple of weeks ago."

"I might have to check that out," Karen said. "One of my bosses is ridiculously picky about where he eats, so it'd be nice to find another restaurant we could add to the list."

Sarah was about to reply when she felt her phone buzz. Thinking it might be Jason again, she dug it out of her bag and glanced at the screen. Instead it was a text from Matt's daytime phone.

_Everything okay?_

She balanced the boxes in one arm and clumsily typed out a reply with the other hand. _Shockingly okay. My biggest task today has been going to the post office._

_Good. Be careful._

She put her phone away and turned her attention back to Karen. "I take it you like your bosses more than I like mine, then."

Karen smiled good-naturedly, but there was an oddly bittersweet look in her eyes. "They're pretty much the only things that have kept me from packing up and leaving this city sometimes."

They chatted amiably until they got to the front of the line, when a second employee finally appeared and opened up another window, so that the two of them finished their transactions at almost the same time.

Karen was replying to a text on her own phone as they exited the building, and Sarah opened her purse to shove the shipping receipts inside. As she did so, the strap snapped, causing her purse to fall open and the contents to spill out onto the floor of the post office.

Sarah swore and knelt down to collect everything that had tumbled from her purse. She noticed too late that the folder of photos she had shoved in there the previous day had fallen open, spilling a few of the graphic photos onto the ground. She hastily snatched most of them up, but one had slid closer to Karen, and the blonde woman glanced down at it as she picked it up.

Even upside down, Sarah could make out which photo it was: James Wesley, slumped in a chair and wearing his blood-stained dress shirt. She knew the picture was graphic—though certainly less so than most of the others in the folder—but she wasn't expecting Karen to have such a strong reaction to it.

All of the color drained from the other woman's face as she slapped a shaking hand to her mouth. When she looked back up, Sarah was startled by the haunted look in her bright blue eyes.

"Why do you have this?" Karen demanded in a shaky voice.

Sarah narrowed her eyes questioningly. The picture was disturbing, but there was no way it invoked that strong of a reaction. Had Karen known Wesley? Sarah looked around warily, unsure if the floor of a post office was really the place to have this conversation, but no one was around them.

"Did you…did you know him?" she asked, nodding towards the picture that Karen still clutched in her hand. "James Wesley?"

Karen nearly flinched at the sound of the name, which was answer enough for Sarah.

"No. I—I didn't," the blonde woman said, shoving the photo back at Sarah and standing up. She brushed her skirt off and grabbed her purse. "I have to go, I'm sorry."

With that she shouldered her purse and made for the front doors. Sarah blinked, startled by her sudden exit. If this girl had known Wesley—and clearly not in a friendly way—she could very well have been in a situation similar to Sarah's. Or maybe Sarah was crazy, and Karen was just a normal person who got reasonably upset when surprised with photos of corpses. But she had been kind, and funny, and if there was some way Sarah could help her out then it was worth a shot.

"Wait!" Sarah called out, shoving the rest of the papers into her bag and rushing after Karen. She lightly caught her arm as she went through the door. "Listen. I—I know what kind of guy Wesley was. Maybe…I can help you."

"No," Karen said, shaking her head firmly before glancing over her shoulder, clearly eager to leave. "You really can't."

"James Wesley ruined my life," Sarah told her steadily. Karen softened slightly at her words, appearing to listen a bit more intently. "In fact, he's still doing a pretty good job of ruining it. Like…like he never died."

"I'm sorry," Karen said gently. She pursed her lips and looked down, as though she was carefully choosing her next words. "Sometimes it feels like I can't shake him off either."

Sarah fumbled in her purse for a pen and scribbled her cell phone number onto the back of a gum wrapper, which she handed to Karen.

"I know this seems weird, but just…if you ever want to talk. It's a big city. You don't meet a lot of people who—who get what you might be going through," she finished lamely, not wanting to give away too much about her own situation without knowing anything about the other woman in exchange.

Karen looked at her warily, before slowly reaching out and taking the paper. "No. I guess you don't."

Customers were approaching the exit that the two women were currently blocking, so Sarah backed away to let them through. When they had passed, Karen was gone.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Because of her late return from her lunch break—during which she had been able to eat no lunch at all—Sarah had to stay late at work to finish up some paperwork and filing. It was dark by the time she got off the subway stop near her apartment. About half a block from her place, she passed by an alleyway and happened to glance down it, then did a double take. There was someone standing at the other end of it, a good sixty feet away.

Sarah strained her eyes harder as she squinted down the dark alleyway, trying to figure out if she had imagined it. No. There was definitely someone standing there. Whoever it was stood completely still, facing her—watching her?

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that it wasn't Matt—the silhouette wasn't right, nor was the behavior—but she whispered the vigilante's name anyway, just to be sure. She did it so softly that no one with normal hearing could possibly make it out—and sure enough, the dark figure showed no indication that it had heard her. Not Matt, then.

She shivered, disturbed by the way the shadowy figure still wasn't moving, and hurried away from the alleyway and towards her apartment. She already had her phone out and her finger hovering over the button to call Matt, but she stopped. Under the bright lights of her lobby, with several people around, she felt suddenly as though she was over-reacting. Just because someone was standing in an alleyway didn't mean they were watching her. It could have been someone taking out the trash, or a homeless person looking for a spot to sleep. It could have been anyone.

But that was the worrisome bit, a part of Sarah's brain argued: It could have been anyone.

When she reached her apartment, she spotted an official looking notice taped to her front door. She ripped it off and scanned it before groaning and resting her head against the doorframe. It was a notice from the water company, informing her that until she paid off the late fees on her account, her water had been shut off indefinitely. No soothing hot shower tonight. She angrily crumpled the notice up and threw it into her already overstuffed purse before letting herself into her apartment.

Sarah knew that Matt was coming over later that night, but she was so on edge from the events of the day that she still jumped violently when she heard his usual knock from the fire escape.

When she went open the window she saw that he was leaning heavily against the railing. She stepped aside to let him in, and he slowly pushed off of the metal support and hoisted himself through the window. She was surprised when he stumbled just slightly upon landing—barely enough to notice had it not been for the way he'd always silently landed on past visits. Once his feet were on the ground, he rested against the windowsill tiredly. The window itself remained open, allowing the cool night air to come inside.

Now that Matt was illuminated by the light of her apartment, she could clearly see the blood running down the side of his neck.

"You're bleeding," she pointed out, as though he didn't already know.

"Yeah. Courtesy of our cop friends."

Her eyebrows went up in surprise. "What happened?"

"I did some research, found a couple of addresses for the names on the list you gave me. Second one I went to, McDermott and Donovan were there," Matt said, inhaling painfully before continuing. "Sounded like they offered this guy the same deal they offered you, only he tried to skip town with the cash advance. He was already packed when they showed up. They weren't happy."

Sarah felt a pang of guilt; the same idea had crossed her mind, but she had quickly realized that twenty grand wouldn't have gotten her as far from Orion as she needed. Definitely not as far as the full reward—the zeroes tacked onto the end of that figure had been enough to get her as far away as she could have wanted, and occasionally that thought scratched at the back of her mind, begging her to imagine what might have been if she had picked the other choice.

Pushing the thoughts aside, she took a few steps forward until she was next to him, and stood on her tip toes to try to get a better look at where all of the blood was coming from.

"Can you take your mask off?" she asked him tentatively.

After a beat, he did so, pulling his mask off slowly and tossing it on the dining room table in front of them. Sarah chewed her lip at the sight of the matted blood that covered one side of his neck, along with the entire back of it. It looked like there were several cuts all over the area. She frowned, confused as to how he had gotten such an injury.

"No offense, but…McDermott and Donovan don't really seem like the kind of guys who could get the drop on you like that," Sarah said uncertainly.

Matt shook his head. "Wasn't them. Donovan was unconscious, and I was just about to have the pleasure of breaking McDermott's nose for a second time when the guy they'd been threatening came up behind me. I wasn't even paying attention to him. He smashed something over my back—one of those big glass vases, I think."

Sarah looked at him in surprise. "Wait, the guy you were saving did this?"

"Apparently he thought he could still get the full reward if he brought me in," Matt said with at harsh laugh. "By the time I realized what he was about to do, I didn't move quite fast enough. It wasn't a very effective plan on his part. Mostly just annoying."

"Is annoying really the right word for this?" she asked, before catching sight of the back of his shirt, which was torn and wet with more blood. There was enough of it that it had smeared all over the white windowsill. She looked back up at his face in disbelief. "You're bleeding all over the place. Why didn't you go to Claire's and get stitches?"

"She's at work. And anyway, I don't need stitches. I just need to get the glass out," he said, raising his eyebrows at her hopefully.

There was a pause while his words sank in before Sarah tilted her head back and cast her eyes towards the ceiling in exasperation. "And you remembered that digging sharp things out of people's skin is my favorite thing to do."

"I'm sorry," he said with a tired, crooked grin. "You can say no."

Sarah ignored him as she glanced around the living room, which opened into her kitchen. Neither the kitchen overhead light nor the side table lamps next to her couch provided a bright enough light for her to go about finding glass in a wound.

"There's not enough light in here to do much of anything. Come on," she said, crossing the room to her bedroom door and opening it. Matt brushed past her and she got a good look at the way his shirt was torn along the upper part of his back, allowing glimpses of bleeding skin to show through. She glanced back at the window, which had dark streaks of red going down the frame. Shaking her head, she switched on the overhead light and the bright desk lamp, then gestured towards her desk chair. "You can sit there, if you want. It's better lighting."

Matt nodded, then reached behind his shoulders and pulled his shirt over his head in one swift motion. Sarah blinked, suddenly feeling oddly self-conscious about the fact that they were in her bedroom. He didn't seem to notice her reaction—which was reasonable, given the amount of sharp glass currently biting into his skin.

"I'm, uh…going to go get the first aid kit," she stammered, then quickly left the room.

She grabbed said kit—a new, better-equipped one that she had thought to buy last time she was at the drug store—from the bathroom, pausing to give herself a disapproving look in the mirror before returning to the bedroom, grabbing one of the wooden dining room chairs along the way and dragging it along with her.

Matt was already straddling the desk chair, leaning forward over the back rest. He turned his head a fraction when she entered the room, where she noticed he was running his fingers over a row of records that were neatly lined up on a shelf next to her desk.

"What records are these?"

Sarah tilted her head to read the titles that his hand was hovering over as she positioned the dining room chair behind him. "Well, the ones you're touching right now are in the R section. So Rachmaninov, Richter, Rubinstein…the usual suspects."

His mouth quirked up as she rattled off the pianists' names affectionately. "I didn't know you had a record player."

Sarah opened the first aid kit and set it on the desk before settling herself down cross-legged on the chair. "I don't. I had this really nice old one that belonged to my mom a long time ago. It was her dad's before that." She paused and shrugged. "But I had to sell it."

"I'm sorry."

"It's alright. I mean, it paid for my rent that month. I probably could have gotten more, but I carved my name into it when I was little, and I guess not everyone wants a record player that has 'SARAH C' scratched across the top," she said lightly.

She reached over and twisted the neck of the desk lamp so that the bright light was aimed directly at Matt's back. The bruises and blood that covered his skin were numerous—some old, some obviously newer. It was clear which area had glass embedded in it—the skin all over his upper back was bloody and inflamed.

"Jesus, Matt," Sarah breathed out.

"It looks worse than it is. I would assume."

She just shook her head but didn't argue.

"So…what'd you do to him?" she asked hesitantly as she sterilized the sharp tweezers, remembering the steps from the night she'd had to dig barbed wire out of his shoulder.

"Who?"

"The guy who put all of this glass in your skin."

Matt shrugged dismissively. "He was in his fifties and pretty overweight. Didn't take more than a hit to knock him out."

"That's it?" she asked carefully. "No…breaking bones or comas?"

"Not worth the effort," Matt said bitterly. Sarah found herself strangely relieved to hear that Matt hadn't lost his shit on the man, as much of a cowardly act hitting him with the vase had been. They fell into silence as she began to work the glass out of his skin.

"You have a lot of books," he noted after a while. She wondered if he had been using his senses to observe her room during the entire stretch of silence, and glanced around quickly to make sure there was nothing embarrassing he might be picking up on. Luckily, she had just cleaned the apartment the day before.

"I don't have a lot of time to read them these days, but yeah. I was always that girl who kept all of the assigned reading from high school and college." As she looked at the books lining her shelf, Sarah remembered the way Matt had been able to pick up on the indents that Yates' writing had left on his notepad, and she wondered how extensive the ability was.

"Can you read normal books?" she asked curiously as she began wiggling another tiny shard of glass out of his skin. She glanced up at Matt's profile and saw that he looked slightly offended. "What? I don't know a lot of other blind people with superpowers, or I'd probably…you know…ask a friendlier one."

Matt sighed but answered her question anyway. "I can, in theory. By feeling the ink on the pages. But…it's difficult. It takes a lot of concentration. Just reading a printed flyer is exhausting, so a whole book would probably take me forever. It's a lot easier to just get audiobooks."

"Not Braille?" she said curiously.

"Braille is fine. It's quicker to read than ink. But it takes up a lot of space. One law book could take up half of the top shelf on your bookcase."

Sarah glanced at the bookcase in question. "Oh. Wow. So, yeah…audiobooks make sense."

"Or digital Braille. But regular ink is definitely a last resort."

"But you have a regular Bible on your nightstand," she commented absently as she recalled seeing the book and noting how odd it was the night she had helped Foggy patch him up. As soon as she said the words she realized her slip and mentally kicked herself.

Matt turned his head slightly, his eyebrows raised disapprovingly, but not looking entirely surprised.

"Not that I was prying into your stuff. I went into your room to get you a blanket the last time I had to dig sharp stuff out of you," she explained awkwardly, waving her hand in the general direction of his previously injured shoulder. "Sorry."

He shook his head before facing forward again.

"It's fine. I could already tell you went in there, anyway. My whole apartment smelled like you."

There was a pause.

"I'm sorry, you're saying I _smell?_ " Sarah asked worriedly.

"You don't smell _bad_ ," Matt clarified with a laugh. "You just smell like yourself. Your shampoo and your soap and…whatever else."

"Huh. So, if you could pick up on my scent just from me walking around your apartment, how strong is it when you're sitting right next to me?" she asked curiously. Personally, she thought it sounded like an awful experience—being able to smell people even when they weren't around—but Matt spoke about it casually, as just a fact of life.

"I get used to the scents of people I spend a lot of time around," he explained. "Plus, you don't wear a lot of perfume, which is nice. Sometimes someone with a lot of strong-smelling body spray will walk by, and I can taste it in the air for hours, even if I try to block it out."

"Like Mrs. Benedict and her obsession with White Diamonds perfume?"

Matt's broad shoulders moved as he laughed. "It's awful. A lot of old women wear that scent, but she just wears _so much_ of it. Foggy was the one who met with her the first few times, and he warned me about how strong it was. I avoided meeting her in person until Foggy was too busy to go one day. The day I met you, actually," he noted.

Sarah remembered Matt and Mrs. Benedict strolling out of the apartment complex that day, and wondered how differently everything might have gone if Foggy hadn't been too busy that day. She never would have seen the scar on Matt's face and put two-and-two together. He never would have had a reason to track her down later that night. She wouldn't be digging glass shards out of someone's skin using the light of her desk lamp.

"Maybe I'll try getting her better smelling perfume for Christmas," she murmured as she dropped another bloody glass bit onto the paper towel she had spread out on her desk. "But my point—before we got off track talking about your weird bloodhound sense of smell—was that if there's any book that seems liked it'd be a pain to read in normal ink format, it's the Bible."

The tension returned to Matt's shoulders, and she wrinkled her brow in confusion at the change from the light mood he had been in just a moment ago. She wiped away a trickle of blood that was running down his back, deciding not to push the subject if he wasn't going to elaborate. After a few long moments of silence, he spoke.

"It was my father's," he said shortly. "I don't keep it to read."

Sarah paused her ministrations and glanced up, uncertain of what to say. But Matt was facing forward and she couldn't see his expression. She remembered the articles she had looked up when she had researched Matt so long ago; she knew that Jack Murdock had been murdered after a boxing match when Matt was a child. Letting her eyes linger on the wounds that littered his back—physical proof of the violence that Matt seemed barely able to keep a lid on—she wondered how much if it had been shaped by what had happened to his father, and how much of it was just innate.

"I'm sorry," she said finally. They fell into silence as she finished pulling the glass out of his skin. After about ten more minutes, she was finished. She winced sympathetically as she looked at how much glass was now laying on the bloody paper towel on her desk. A dark bruise was forming over most of the right side of his back, and she absently reached out to trace the edge of it. Matt turned his head slightly at the contact, but didn't say anything.

"All done," she said softly, retracting her hand. "Looks like it hurts."

He shrugged. "It's not bad."

"Do you want some painkillers or something?" she asked him. Then her lips quirked up slightly. "Maybe more vodka?"

Matt made a face. "Ugh. Definitely no more vodka."

"How about water instead?"

"Water sounds great, actually," he said with a tired nod.

Sarah started to stand up and then stopped as she remembered the notice that had been taped to her door. She sat back down. "I don't have any."

He raised his eyebrows at her in bemusement. "Nice of you to offer, then."

"I forgot that my water got shut off," she explained apologetically. Then, realizing how irresponsible and pathetic that sounded, she hastily added, "They're doing, um, some kind of maintenance, I think."

If he picked up on the small lie—which she was hoping he hadn't, given his slightly disoriented state—he didn't call her out on it. Instead, he just nodded absently, wincing as he ran his hand over the back of his neck.

"I'll go across the street and get some bottled water," she offered, grabbing her wallet and pulling a ten dollar bill out, which she shoved in her pocket before picking up her keys.

Matt shook his head, standing unsteadily and reaching for his shirt, which he slowly pulled over his head. "Don't do that. I'll have water when I get home."

Sarah put a hand on his arm to pause him. "I literally _just_ got done digging a ton of glass out of your skin. Just—sit down for, like, ten minutes while I go get water. It's only across the street."

He must have been tired, because after a pause he nodded his head in reluctant agreement before sitting down heavily in the chair again. She studied the dark circles under his eyes and the exhaustion that lined his face.

"You can lie down if you want," she offered tentatively.

He nodded briefly again. "I might."

Down at the corner store, Sarah grabbed a few bottles of water out of the cooler section. She quickly paid and crossed the street back to her apartment, looking around warily for any dark figures standing in the shadows. She didn't see any.

The elevator door opened on Sarah's floor and she stepped out, lost in thoughts of men in dark alleyways and blonde women in post offices. It occurred to her that she should probably fill Matt in on both of those when she got back. She froze as she came around the corner and caught sight of the front door to her apartment.

It was open.

She was positive she had closed and locked it behind her when she left. There was no way Matt had gone out the front door instead of the window, much less left the door wide open behind him. Her mind immediately jumped to the shadowy figure in the alleyway from earlier.

She slowly crept down the hallway, straining her ears for sounds of a fight, but she didn't hear any. In fact, she didn't hear anything at all. She knew Matt was out of it from the injury and exhaustion, but he couldn't be that distracted that he'd let himself be caught off guard by whoever was in her apartment, right?

Sarah fingered the pepper spray that hung from her key chain, resting her finger on the bright red button on top. She tried to remain as quiet as possible as she paused outside the open door, peering into the apartment. She could only see the living room from this angle, but it was empty and quiet. Stepping into the apartment, she quickly glanced into her bedroom: the bed was vacant, and to her surprise, the bedroom window was open, allowing a cool breeze to drift through the curtains.

A noise off to Sarah's right caught her attention, and she whipped her head around. For a moment, she felt a rush of relief when she saw that it was only Lauren, standing next to her dining room table.

But Sarah's relief quickly faded when she took in the rest of the scene: specifically, the black mask and tattered, bloody gloves that Lauren was holding in her hand. Then the blood streaked across the windowsill that she had clearly been inspecting when Sarah walked in.

Lauren looked up from the bloody windowsill and held the black mask up slightly, letting it dangle from her fingertips as she fixed Sarah with a wide-eyed, distrustful look.

"So, I'm guessing this is who your friend-not-a-friend is, then."


	17. Shifting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, friends! Thanks for being so patient while I took a bit of time off to enjoy the holidays. The next chapter will be up quicker than this one was, don't worry.
> 
> A few thoughts on the Season 2 promotional pictures that were released recently: 1) Where is Sarah? Did they forget her? Are they saving her as a surprise? Is she standing behind Karen in that one photo, and we just can't see her? I don't understand. 2) Seeing more of the new suit reinforces my choice to keep the black outfit for this story by about ten thousand percent.
> 
> Sorry for the depressing tone of this chapter. It'll get better, I promise. Enjoy! (?)

### Chapter Seventeen: Shifting

The two women stood in silence for what was probably only a few seconds, but felt like much longer, Sarah with her mouth hanging open and Lauren with the mask gripped tightly in her hand.

"Lauren. What…what are you doing here?" Sarah asked finally.

"Greg's dad is in the hospital," Lauren answered slowly, still appearing to be very much shell-shocked by the situation. "He had to catch a flight home tonight. I don't like staying in the apartment by myself. I called you, but…you didn't answer."

Sarah glanced at her cell phone, which still sat on her dining room table on silent mode, which she had forgotten to switch off after work.

Lauren was again looking uneasily at the blood on the windowsill, apparently unable to look away. "Is…is that your blood?"

Sarah looked at the blood and then at her stricken friend before snapping out of her daze. "No! No. It's not mine. I'm fine."

"Right. I'm guessing it belongs to the guy who just jumped out your bedroom window, then. Which, I might add, is on the _fifth floor._ Is he insane? He must be painted on sidewalk now."

Sarah's eyes widened slightly, and before she processed what she was doing, she found herself moving into the bedroom and over to the window. Unlike the one in the living room, this one didn't open onto a fire escape. The window was still open, and she leaned out and looked down, squinting into the dark alley below. There were several other fire escapes and scaffolding nearby. The light from the streetlamps was dim, but she didn't see any black-clad figures lying anywhere below.

She leaned back in, oddly relieved. She knew Matt wouldn't actually jump out of a window if there was no where for him to jump to, but he had seemed noticeably off his game tonight—she probably should have checked to see if he had another concussion. Sliding the window closed and locking it, she turned around to see that Lauren had trailed her into the room. The other woman lingered in the doorway, still looking stunned by the night's events, although Sarah could see it quickly fading into anger and alarm.

The situation didn't improve when Lauren's gaze fell across Sarah's desk, which was still littered in broken glass and bloody disinfecting wipes.

"Oh, good," she said faintly. "More blood. Have you always performed surgery out of your bedroom? What the hell is going on, Sarah?"

"It's…it's a long story," Sarah said pleadingly.

"Give me the Cliff Notes version?"

"Well…it's—we—I mean….um," Sarah stuttered to a stop.

Lauren stared at her. "Okay, less Cliff Note-y than that. I need more words. Nouns maybe. Or verbs."

But Sarah felt like she was frozen. She couldn't tell Lauren anything, not without putting her in danger. Especially not with Matt undoubtedly still lurking somewhere nearby, listening. Even if he wasn't, there was no way she could expose Lauren to the dangers of the world she found herself living in these days. But there was no way of brushing this off, giving the same half-answers she'd been giving for almost a year and then changing the subject.

"I—I know you probably have a lot of questions—"

" _Yes_ , I have questions!" Lauren exclaimed. "How do you even _know_ him? And since when? Why is he bleeding all over your apartment? Was he pulling his _shirt_ back on when I walked in? What—what the hell is even going in your life right now?"

Sarah brought her hands to her mouth, shaking her head as she looked at her friend helplessly. "I'm so sorry. I can't tell you. It would put you in danger."

If it was possible for Lauren's eyes to go wider in disbelief, they did.

"You're joking." Lauren waited for her friend to respond, but Sarah remained silent. "Oh, my God. You're not joking. Sarah, this—this is serious stuff. You could get hurt, o-or killed, or arrested—or all three. That guy who just jumped out your window is _Daredevil_. The Devil of Hell's Kitchen. How does that sound like a safe person to be friends with?"

"It's not that simple. He's—he's not the bad guy, I swear. Just, please trust me—"

"Trust you?" Lauren repeated. "This whole last year, you've been hiding things from me. Ever since you quit your job. And now—now this?" Lauren flung the mask down on the table angrily.

"I know. I know, I'm so sorry. It wasn't safe to involve you in anything that's been going on. It's still not."

"What does that even _mean_? How does me knowing stuff put me in danger?"

"Knowing too much is what put me in danger. I just—I can't tell you about him. Or about any of it. I can't," Sarah repeated forcefully.

Lauren shook her head, laughing mirthlessly. "You've never stood up for yourself a goddamn day in your life, and the first time you actually decide to do it is to protect a vigilante?"

"I'm not just protecting him, I'm protecting you, too," Sarah snapped.

"From _what?_ If he's not the bad guy, then what do you need to protect me from?"

Images of Ronan and Jason flashed through her mind. Sarah bit her tongue again, painfully aware of the fact that there were three people listening to this conversation, even if one of them wasn't in the room. She tried to find the words to calm her friend down, but her silence just hung in the air between them.

"Okay," Lauren said quietly. "Clearly there's no reason for me to be here, then. I'm going home."

As much as Sarah wanted to tell her not to go, there was no point in having her stay. There was nothing that Sarah could tell her that would make her understand without giving her information that was dangerous to know.

"Lauren…"

"If you decide that you actually feel like telling your best friend about the things going on in your life, come find me."

Lauren waited a beat for her to respond. Sarah just nodded tightly, blinking away the prickling sensation behind her eyes as Lauren walked out, slamming the front door behind her.

Sarah stood completely still for a minute in the silence of her apartment.

"Shit," she whispered, pushing her hair out of her face. She kicked the leg of the table next to her in frustration. " _Shit._ "

A few moments later, she heard the familiar noise of Matt landing lightly on the fire escape. He was one of the very last people she wanted to talk to right now, and she briefly debated just going to her room, getting into bed, and ignoring his knock on the window. Instead, she reluctantly made her way over to the window to let him in and begin the argument that would undoubtedly ensue, quickly scanning the room along the way for anything fragile, just in case.

Once Matt was inside the apartment and the window was closed behind him, the two of them stood in silence for a few long moments.

"What's she going to do?"

Sarah hesitated before answering. She really didn't want a repeat of the last time Matt had overheard her talking to someone about him; especially since this time, it wouldn't just be her on his radar.

"Nothing."

Matt's jaw twitched and he threw her a doubtful look. "Nothing?"

"Nothing," Sarah repeated firmly. He still looked unconvinced, so she sighed and continued. "Lauren has been my friend for a long time. She's not going to do anything that she thinks would put me in more danger."

"How do you know she won't go to the police if she thinks that's what will keep you safe?"

"She knows how I feel about the police in this city. She doesn't trust them any more than I do. Besides, she's not the type to freak out about stuff like this. It's—it's just the surprise that's making her mad. No one likes being lied to," Sarah said. Matt just rubbed hand over his mouth angrily, pacing around the small area. "Did she…did she see your face? Could you tell?"

He shook his head. "I heard the door opening and thought it was you coming back. But I realized the heartbeat wasn't right before she came into the room. She just saw my back for a second as I was leaving."

_Leaving_ seemed like an excessively casual way to describe jumping from a fifth-story window, but Sarah wasn't about to argue that at the moment.

Matt finally stopped pacing. "I need to go."

Relieved to be left alone, Sarah picked his mask up from the table to hand to him, but stopped as something occurred to her.

"Go…where?" she asked nervously.

"What?" Matt asked.

"What are you going to do?"

He tilted his head back and exhaled. "I need to make sure she doesn't go to the police."

Her eyes widened slightly, and she automatically took a step away from him, still holding his mask. "Make sure how?"

"I'm just going to listen in," he told her impatiently, holding his hand out again for the mask. "If she decides to call the police or involve other people, I need to know. She won't even know I'm there."

Sarah hesitated, but didn't move to give him the mask. Instead, she took another step back.

Matt slowly cocked his head. "Sarah…give me my mask."

She winced at the warning note in his tone and grasped the fabric in her hands tighter. "Just…okay. Say that you…you know, parkour over to her apartment, and she _is_ on the phone with the police. Then what?"

Matt faltered slightly—apparently he hadn't yet given much thought to what his next step would be in that situation.

"Then at least we know. And we can be prepared for the police and probably some of your coworkers to suddenly show up at your doorstep."

"That's it?" Sarah asked skeptically, twisting the mask nervously in her fingers. "Y-you just let her call the police. No swooping down and—and threatening her, or whatever."

"No, I'm not going to drop down and interrogate a pregnant woman. But I also can't just take your word for it that she won't tell anyone what she saw. Now give me my mask."

She shook her head, taking a few more steps back. Matt matched her movements, keeping within a yard of her but not coming any closer.

"Sarah—"

"What if you change your mind when you get there? I know what you look like when you're angry. I've seen it kind of a lot. The heavy breathing, and the jaw twitch, and the—the hand thing," she said, gesturing towards the way his right hand unconsciously clenched and unclenched by his side. "If you're going to flip your shit, do it here. Do it with me. Not with Lauren."

As the words came out of her mouth, a small voice in the back of her mind was screaming at her for being stupid. _Note To Self: Do not invite the dangerous vigilante to flip his shit on you._

"I'm angry because you won't give me my mask," he said pointedly, taking a step towards her. "Not one of your better plans, by the way."

"Not—not the best, maybe. Matt, I'm telling you, she's not going to talk to anyone," Sarah said pleadingly. "I trust her—"

"That's not good enough for me," he snapped. Then, taking a deep breath to calm himself, he said evenly, "I need my mask in order to leave. And I'd really like it if you didn't make me take it from you."

His tone was threatening, but his expression and posture just looked incredibly exhausted. Which was possibly why he hadn't already made a move to take the mask away from her.

There was a beat during which Sarah still clutched the black fabric, chewing the inside of her cheek anxiously. Finally, she held the mask out slowly for him to take. He took it and slipped it over his eyes immediately, then worked his black gloves back onto his hands before heading towards the window.

Sarah sank into one of the dining room chairs, feeling completely drained as she leaned forward and let her head fall into her hands. To be honest, she didn't really think Matt would hurt Lauren—she believed him when he said he would just be listening. But somehow it felt like she was failing to protect her friend anyway, after she had already failed her once tonight.

"Sarah."

She jumped slightly. The room had been so silent that she had assumed Matt had already gone, but when she looked up he was standing in front of the open window with his head turned back towards her.

"I'm not going to do anything to your friend. I promise."

Sarah was pretty sure Lauren wouldn't call herself Sarah's friend anymore—not after tonight, at least. But she just nodded numbly and let her head drop back down into her hands. The next time she looked up, he was gone.

A long time passed before she finally stood, walking towards the kitchen to find something that would clean the blood off her window.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

A few hours later, Matt let himself into his apartment through the roof-top door. He leaned against the wall for a few moments, allowing himself to sink into the aches in his body before slowly descending the stairs.

For all of Sarah's concern about him following Lauren home, the results had been—thankfully—uneventful. It had taken him a few minutes to catch up to the cab she had taken, which was stuck at an intersection, trying to detour around some night-time construction. Her heartbeat had been erratic, and her breathing deep, as though she'd been trying to calm down. But she hadn't said anything while in the cab, and he'd stuck around listening for a while after she'd let herself into her apartment, waiting to see if she called the police. But all he'd heard was her crying herself to sleep.

Matt pulled his mask off and collapsed onto the couch, debating whether or not he felt like bothering to shower and mess with his bandages before going to sleep. He shifted slightly, then inhaled sharply as his bruised ribs protested the movement. It almost distracted him from the stinging pain that went down his neck and across his back. Sleep definitely sounded like the much more tempting option than moving around. But first he needed to deal with the nagging feeling in the back of his mind over how he'd left things with Sarah.

Obviously he'd been irritated—to say the least—when she had refused to hand his mask over. But, he had to admit to himself, it wasn't like he hadn't given her reason to be nervous about him being around her friend. He'd done his best to keep calm during their argument, but somehow it still felt like he had done wrong by her, _again_. The least he could do was let her know that nothing bad had happened between him and her friend.

Matt's normal, non-burner phone was still on the side table next to him, and he fumbled to unlock the screen, sliding his fingers across the well-memorized areas of the screen that would enable the phone's voice dictation.

"Text Sarah," he spoke clearly into the phone.

_"Draft text to: Sarah. What would you like to send?"_

"Lauren is fine…she didn't talk to anyone." He hesitated for a second, then added, "I'm sorry about earlier. I wasn't going to hurt either of you."

The phone took a second to catch up, then the automated voice read the text message back to him before asking, _"Send Text?"_

Matt fidgeted with the mask in his left hand, rubbing the fabric between his fingers as he debated. Finally, he shook his head.

"Discard text," he told the phone.

_"Text discarded. Draft new message?"_

Matt dictated the new text: "Your friend is fine. She didn't talk to anyone."

_"Send Text?"_

He sighed, before running a hand down his face and mumbling, "Yeah, I guess so."

There was a pause.

_"Send text?"_ the phone repeated, somehow insistent even in its monotone.

Matt groaned and moved his hand away from his mouth.

"Yes," he said tiredly. "Send text."

_"Text sent."_

Matt had planned to move from the couch to the bed at some point, but found that he was too drained. Instead he just leaned his head back against the back of the couch and closed his eyes, already regretting the pain he knew he'd have in his neck in the morning.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sarah was still awake when her phone buzzed with a new text message. She knew who it was immediately—no one else texted her this late. The text simply read: _Your friend is fine. She didn't talk to anyone._

She rolled her eyes. Terse and to the point, as usual. But at least he had let her know. She closed the message without replying and went to bed, hoping to get at least a few hours of sleep before the morning came.

There was no such luck, and she found herself awake the entire night, tossing in her bed as she ran through a million scenarios for what she could do about Lauren. None of them worked—there was no scenario in which Lauren could know nothing and still remain her friend. But she couldn't know about Orion without knowing that Sarah was working with Matt, and there was no way Sarah could tell her anything about Matt without him finding out.

And so the next day she found herself with no more answers than the night before—only dark, tired rings under her eyes and a hopeless, empty feeling in her chest. She was currently stuck in traffic, struggling with a particularly stubborn gearshift. Jason had given her the number of a space in a public garage where she would find the car she was supposed to drive to a warehouse down by the river, failing to mention that the car was roughly a thousand years old, and that the gearshift had rusted so badly it barely worked. She had taken a look in the trunk to see what exactly she was transporting, but whatever it was had been locked away in an assortment of metal containers. She could feel it weighing the back tires down as she drove.

Sarah finally got to her destination and slowly stopped the car in front of the gate, leaning forward over the steering wheel and craning her neck so that she could peer up at the building. It looked like a typical warehouse, with old cars and scrap metal littering the area outside.

She rolled down her window and reached for the security box next to the gate, where she punched in the code that Jason had given her. With a clanking noise, the gate started to slide open, and she steered the car through. She glanced in her rearview mirror nervously as the gate slid shut again behind her, then pulled up to the building and shut the car off, fiddling with the pepper spray on her keys before she pulled them out of the ignition and opened the car door.

As her shoes crunched against the gravel, she finally caught sight of another person on the property, sitting at an old picnic table next to a car on cylinder blocks. The guy looked to be in his late teens—maybe a high school senior. He was idly toying with the short twists in his hair while reading a thick text book. Sarah craned her neck slightly to read the cover: _AP Psychology_. Definitely a high school student, then. She frowned. Why would someone so young be involved in anything to do with Orion?

When he looked up from his book and spotted her, his expression changed from neutral to one of distrust and—maybe she was imagining it—nervousness.

"Um, hi," she said with an awkward wave.

"Hang on," he said, closing the book and getting up from his chair. "I'll get my dad."

"Your…dad?"

"Yeah," he said coldly. "My family owns this place. Or, we did. Until you guys decided you wanted it."

Sarah didn't know what to say to that. She'd had no idea this warehouse even existed, much less what had gone down when Orion had taken it over. But she knew from experience that when the higher-ups at Orion wanted something, they didn't generally care about the people it originally belonged to.

"Dad!" the boy called into the open warehouse. "That lady from Orion is here."

A middle-aged man in jeans and a New York Knicks t-shirt came around the corner, wiping what looked like motor oil off of his hands. She could see what looked like an ornate cross tattooed across the dark skin of his right arm, partially visible underneath his sleeve.

"I guess you're Sarah," he said by way of greeting, eyeing her warily.

"Yeah," Sarah replied. "I just…came to drop off this stuff."

She looked back and forth from the man to his son. She wasn't sure what she had been expecting—more slimy guys in cheap suits, maybe—but definitely not two seemingly normal people who were looking at her like she was the slimy guy in a cheap suit.

"I know that. How long do we have to keep it here for?"

Sarah was caught off guard by the question. "Um…I don't know. Did no one talk to you about that?"

"No one talks to us about much of anything," the man said pointedly. "I think only you executive-types get to be in on any of that."

She blinked at being categorized as part of the 'you guys' of Orion. Her instinct was to protest being lumped in with the high profile criminals that ran the company, but she realized resignedly that to the outside observer, she was every bit as responsible for the things that happened at that company as Ronan or Jason was.

"I'm not really…one of those," Sarah mumbled.

The older man gave her a skeptical look. "That's not what I've been hearing."

Sarah furrowed her brow at him in confusion, but before she could ask anything else, he and his son disappeared outside to unload the mysterious cartons from her trunk. When they were done, they went back to what they had been doing without a word to her.

When Sarah got back to the office, she was annoyed to find that Jason wasn't even there, despite the fact that he had instructed her to report back to him immediately after dropping the mystery shipment off. She desperately wanted to go home early, but she also didn't want Jason to turn up at her place, wanting to know why she had never returned from her task.

She slipped her phone out of her pocket and dialed his cell number, using her other hand to gather up several folders that littered her desk. When he didn't answer, she left him a short voicemail saying that the delivery had gone fine, and that she was going to finish up the rest of her paperwork at home. Normally she would be more concerned about how he would respond, but today she found that she didn't have the energy for any more worries than the ones she already had.

As soon as she hung up from leaving the voicemail, her phone rang. The number that flashed up on the screen was a Hell's Kitchen area code, but it wasn't a number she recognized. She answered anyway.

"Hello?"

There was no sound on the other end. She frowned and pulled the phone away from her ear: the line was still going.

"Hello?" she repeated. Again, no one spoke.

Sarah rolled her eyes and hit the 'End' button. _Probably an automated system._

Matt didn't show up that night. She figured he was probably still angry with her for the stunt she had pulled with his mask, so maybe it was better if he kept his distance for a couple of days anyway.

When she woke up the next morning, the hollow feeling in her chest had only grown worse, and she barely paid attention to her work that day. She checked her phone repeatedly for any calls or texts from Lauren, but all she found were two missed calls from the same number that had called her the day before. They hadn't left a voicemail.

She had just checked her phone for the tenth time that night—not particularly expecting to see Lauren's name actually come up on the screen—when she heard Matt's knock at the window. She let him in, then returned to the kitchen, where she was pouring bottled water into a pot on the stove so that she could make some pasta.

"You still don't have any water?"

"No," Sarah shook her head, then remembered her white lie from the other night. "Um…the maintenance isn't done yet, I guess. I've been showering at Mrs. Benedict's."

Matt's face—the lower half of it that was visible—was carefully blank. "Seems like a hassle."

It had been a hassle. Sarah had called countless phone numbers in an attempt to shift some of her debt around: utilities, medical bills, student loans, credit cards…it seemed like she couldn't pay one without falling behind on all of the others. Finally she had managed to postpone a couple of payment dates, which cleared up just enough money for her to pay her water fine and get her service reinstated—which was supposed to happen tomorrow morning, hopefully.

"It's fine," she muttered tiredly, stirring the pasta with a wooden spoon. "It doesn't really matter."

When she looked over at Matt, he was frowning at her words, though she wasn't sure why. She changed the subject by filling him in on the mysterious delivery she had made, including where the gate code and the location of the warehouse. She also mentioned the fact that the father seemed to know something she didn't about her role at Orion, which caught Matt's attention.

"What do you think that means?"

"I have no idea. But he seemed to know who I was. Like…people have been talking about me, or something."

"Doesn't sound like a good sign."

"No. You know, for a company I'm trying to get away from, it kind of seems like they just keep tightening their hold," Sarah said.

Matt didn't reply, and Sarah went back to the pasta on the stove, feeling even more hopeless than she had earlier. What was the point of getting away from Orion if she was just going back to a father who didn't remember her and friend who might never want to talk to her again? Was it even worth the trouble to try to leave?

"What's wrong?"

Sarah looked up from where she had been absentmindedly stirring the pasta around the pot as she'd gotten lost in her thoughts.

"What?"

Matt nodded his head in her direction and noted, "You're quiet."

She shrugged. "I'm quiet sometimes."

"Not like this."

Sarah just looked at him, not even knowing where she would start.

"Nothing important," she said simply. "Just thinking."

Matt looked unconvinced, but didn't push the subject. After a few seconds, he tilted his head.

"Your water is boiling over."

Sarah looked down at the stovetop and swore, grabbing the handle and shifting the pot away from the hot burner. In doing so, she accidentally splashed some of the boiling water onto the counter, where it got all over the notebook full of her notes on Lauren's baby shower, including the RSVPs she hadn't even opened yet.

"Shit."

She picked the soaking wet notebook up by the corner and flipped it open; the ink on all the pages was running so badly that it was unintelligible.

"What's that?" Matt asked from behind her.

"Stuff for Lauren's baby shower," she said quietly.

He paused. "You guys are talking again?"

Sarah pursed her lips, snapping the ruined notebook closed. It didn't even have anything incredibly important in it, but for some reason she couldn't help but feel upset.

"No. We aren't."

Sarah threw the notebook in the trash can. She swept her gaze over the now-burned pasta on the stove, the stack of bills she had been rifling through earlier, then back down to the trashcan.

"I'm…going to go to bed now," she decided.

Matt turned his head in her direction with a confused frown, thrown by the sudden shift in conversation. "What?"

But she was already to her room, and she closed the door behind her with a snap, locking the door before crawling into bed without bothering to change out of her clothes.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The next day, in a shocking turn of events, Matt Murdock was feeling guilty.

He was in his office, supposedly reading a Braille copy of a case that he and Foggy were hoping to use as precedent for one of their current clients. But he kept losing his train of thought halfway through, until eventually he gave up and let his let his fingers slip from the paper, leaning back in his chair and removing his glasses so he could rub his eyes.

It wasn't even that he felt what had happened with Sarah and Lauren was his fault—not entirely, at least. It had been clear from what he'd overheard that a blow out had been a long time coming. But the aftermath—that, he was struggling with. Sarah had seemed so incredibly tired the night before. Not in the same way she had after she'd been attacked—the sort of painful exhaustion that gnaws at your bones. A tiredness he was very familiar with. But this had been more like apathy, as though she just didn't care enough to exert any more energy. Another kind of tiredness he was familiar with.

Matt knew how badly it hurt to keep things from your best friend. And how lonely it felt to not be able to confide in them about something so central to your life. If there was anyone who needed someone to confide in, it was Sarah. He heard the way her heartbeat still ticked up whenever either of them mentioned Ronan's name, and the way she religiously kept all of the locks done on her doors and windows now. There was a jumpiness that still hung around her sometimes—an edge that had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with what Ronan had done to her. For as much as she openly talked about the stress of her job and taking care of her father, she never talked about what had happened with Ronan. And for someone who rambled as much as she did, that was notable.

Not that he expected her to confide in him, of all people. But it hadn't really occurred to him that she didn't have anyone she was talking to. From what he had gathered, Lauren was her only close friend, and in all likelihood their friendship had probably just ended due to the secrets Sarah had to keep. He had experienced that particular brand of pain with Foggy, and he couldn't imagine what he would have done had they not been able to reconcile.

"Matt? Are you okay?"

Matt jerked himself out of his thoughts when he registered a familiar voice from the other side of the room. He didn't know how he had missed Karen getting up from her desk and coming to the doorway, even while deep in thought.

"Sorry, Karen," he replied, quickly slipping his sunglasses back on. "I'm fine. What did you need?"

Karen paused before replying. "I was…saying that since we don't have any appointments left today, I might go out and get us some lunch. There's a noodle place a few blocks over that someone recommended to me. Do you want some?"

"No, I'm…not hungry. Thanks," he said distractedly. "Actually, I…I think I might take off. I have some things to take care of today."

It was a lie—sometimes Matt felt like every other word he said to Karen was a lie. By this point, he was so deep in deceit with Karen that there he doubted she would ever be able to move past the truth if he revealed it. The thought didn't help to dull the guilt that was gnawing at his chest.

Karen's skirt swished against her legs as she moved around the desk until she was standing next to him, leaning against the desk drawers.

"Are you sure you're alright, Matt?" she asked softly, and he could hear the worry clearly in her voice.

She was clearly trying to help, but in a strange way she was making it worse, because Matt didn't deserve her concern.. Karen was one of the few bright spots in his life, and he was damaging their friendship every day with the secrets he kept from her. Secrets that he was now forcing someone else to keep, and as a result had cost that person her own best friend.

"I'm fine, Karen," he said evenly, forcing a smile. "Just tired. I think I might be coming down with something."

He could tell she didn't believe him, but thankfully she didn't call him out on it. Instead, she adopted a light, slightly teasing tone. "I thought Foggy said you never admit when you're sick."

Matt had learned quickly that despite her initial unassuming demeanor, when Karen got something between her teeth, she didn't like to let go. Had they had this conversation six months ago, she might have pushed him for more information, determined to get him to open up. But now that she was holding onto her own secrets, she didn't seem to have the will to dig for his anymore.

"Foggy exaggerates," Matt replied, mirroring her light tone. "Is he here?"

He wasn't. Matt couldn't hear his heartbeat from his office.

"No, he went down to the precinct to talk to Brett about some of the warrants we were talking about earlier."

Matt nodded, then stood and grabbed his suit jacket off the back of his chair. "Can you let him know I left for the day?"

"Sure," Karen said uncertainly. He could feel her watching him closely. "I hope you feel better. Try dissolving a zinc tablet under your tongue. It's what my grandmother always had me do."

"That sounds like it tastes awful."

"It did, actually," Karen said with a laugh. "But it usually helped."

A grin flickered across Matt's face. "I might check it out. Thanks, Karen."

Matt had intended to go home, but instead he found himself following the familiar path from his office to the church. Father Lantom was outside, bidding goodbye to an elderly parishioner. Matt could tell by the telltale signs in the priest's body language that he had noticed Matt's presence, so he quietly took a seat on the bench down the sidewalk and waited for him to be done.

A few minutes later, he felt Father Lantom sit down next to him on the bench, facing forward with both hands clasped between his knees.

"You look tired," the priest noted by way of greeting.

"I wouldn't know."

"Fair point. I'm going to guess you came to talk about the young woman you mentioned a while back," Father Lantom said.

"How'd you know?"

"You seem especially conflicted," Father Lantom said knowingly. "It's an effect certain women always seem to have."

Matt raised his eyebrows at the older man's comment, and the corner of his mouth twitched up. "Yeah?"

The father simply chuckled. "I wasn't born a priest, Matthew."

Matt laughed. "No, I guess not."

After a few moments, Father Lantom grew sober again. "Are you still concerned about the measures you're willing to take to ensure this woman keeps your secret?"

"No. I think we've finally moved past that by this point. I hope so, at least," Matt amended. "But now her keeping my secret has turned into a different problem."

"How so?"

He exhaled deeply. "It's affecting her life. In a bad way. In ways I never would have predicted. And I…I think maybe I can help fix what's happened. But it would require…putting a lot of trust into her."

"Well…do you trust her?"

"You make it sound so simple."

"I'd say it is simple," Father Lantom retorted. "You can make it complicated, but when it comes down to it you know if you trust a person or not."

The priest was right, as usual.

"Yes. I do trust her."

"That wasn't too complicated."

Matt laughed shortly. "Yeah, well…turns out that constant, life-threatening danger makes it easier to learn to trust someone."

"I see. A side effect of being in that lion's den together, as it were."

Matt's grin faded as he recalled the conversation the older man was referencing. Was he really about to put so much faith into someone that he had very recently not trusted at all?

"You know, in the news, sometimes they call me the Man Without Fear," Matt said neutrally. He wasn't a particularly big fan of the title.

"I've heard that description, yes," Father Lantom replied. Matt wondered how much the priest paid attention to mentions of his alter-ego in the press.

"The people who coined that name…they think jumping off buildings makes you fearless. But it's not true. Sometimes…sometimes it feels like all I do is fear," Matt admitted.

"Fear doesn't necessarily have to be a hindrance, Matthew. It can be difficult to get stronger without it." Father Lantom was quiet for a long moment, then he asked, "Have you ever heard of the Litany Against Fear?"

Matt searched his memory for any recognition of the prayer, but to no avail.

"No, I don't think so."

"I will face my fear," the Father began quoting, his voice calm and even as always. "I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

Matt paused, not recognizing the passage. "Is that a Catholic prayer?"

The priest shook his head, and there was a slightly mischievous tone to his voice when he responded. "It's from an old science fiction series I used to read."

Matt must have looked surprised, because Father Lantom chuckled.

"It wasn't on the approved reading list in Divinity School, if that's what you're wondering. But I've always suspected that perhaps God put bits of his wisdom into more books than just the Bible. I suppose that's why they'll probably never make me a bishop."

"If you were a bishop I'd have no one to confess to."

"Not to mention I'd probably have to leave the espresso machine here. It technically belongs to the church," the father noted lightly, before again growing serious. "What is it that you're so afraid of, precisely?"

Matt weighed the question before answering. "That I'll make the wrong choice. And my friends will be the ones to pay for it. They could get hurt."

"It sounds like you have a friend that's hurting right now," Father Lantom pointed out. "And that maybe you could do something about it."

Matt didn't reply, and the two of them sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes before the priest spoke up again.

"For what it's worth, I don't think that you've earned your nickname from jumping off buildings."

"No?"

"No. It seems to me that they call you that name because you choose to help people even if it means putting yourself at risk. That's the very core of who you are. Don't lose sight of that."

In truth, Matt had already made his decision several minutes ago. Possibly even before he came to the church. But he found comfort anyway in the words of the man sitting next to him, and he would find himself replaying them in his head from that point until the next time he spoke to Sarah.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It was Friday afternoon, and Sarah was standing in the middle of a crowded coffee shop, waiting to pick up the green tea she had just ordered. She'd just come from one of the offices for her water company, where she had complained that her water still hadn't been turned on. They had promised her it'd be on by Monday at the very latest, due to the weekend, and she had begrudgingly accepted.

Sarah felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. She glanced at the screen, half expecting to see the mysterious silent caller's number. Instead, Matt Murdock's name flashed up on the screen. She hit the answer button.

"Hey," she said, trying not to bump into any of the people around her as she shifted her purse from one shoulder to the other.

"Are you home?"

"No. I'm about to head there now, though," she replied.

"Mind if I come by for a minute?"

Sarah had actually been hoping to go home and curl up under her covers from now until Monday morning. But delaying her big weekend plans by a little bit wouldn't hurt, she supposed.

"Um, sure, I guess. For what?"

"Just to talk to you about a couple of things." He gave no indication of what he wanted to talk about, and she rolled her eyes. The call reminded her suspiciously of the one he had made before springing Claire's surprise visit on her, only this time she didn't have any injuries for him to be acting cagey about.

The cranky barista behind the counter—whose nametag identified him as 'Leonard—" tapped his finger on the pastry case to get her attention, then pointed at the 'No Cell Phones' sign above the register. Sarah gave him an apologetic look and held her finger up.

'Sorry,' she mouthed. After all, it wasn't like she was currently ordering.

"When can I come by?" Matt asked.

She looked out the window at the sidewalk, which was still swarming with people making their way home from work. The subway was undoubtedly worse; it would take forever for her to get home. "I'm only about two blocks away from your place. Do you just want to meet there?"

"Yeah, that's fine."

Leonard the barista gave her another significant look and cleared his throat loudly.

"Okay, good, I—yes, okay, sorry, Leonard," she snapped.

"What?"

"Not you," she said into the phone. "I'll be there in a little bit."

A short while later, she knocked on Matt's front door with her green tea in hand. He let her in, not saying much as she followed him into the living room. She took note of his oddly edgy demeanor and hesitantly sat on the arm of the couch, tracking his movements as he paced around the room.

"So…what's going on?" she asked after a few moments.

Matt came to a halt in front of her and leaned back against the counter. Sarah frowned as she noticed him restlessly drumming his fingers against the surface.

"I wanted to talk to you. About Lauren," he said finally.

Sarah tensed slightly, her fingers tightening around the styrofoam cup in her hand.

"Matt…" she began tiredly. "Can we please not do this again? I _know_ Lauren. Even if she's mad at me, she's not going to tell anyone about what she saw, I swear—"

"I'm not…" Matt shook his head, running his hand through his hair. "That's not what I'm talking about."

She cocked her head, eying him uncertainly. "What are you talking about, then?"

Matt's dark glasses obscured the view of his eyes, making it difficult to read his expression, but by his silence he appeared to be carefully considering whatever he was about to say.

"You and Foggy have spoken a few times now. Has he ever told you what happened when he found out about…what I do?"

Sarah blinked, not expecting the shift in topic. She tried to recall if the subject had ever come up the few times they had spoken. "No…I don't think so. I'd guess that it didn't go well?"

Matt laughed sharply, shaking his head. "That's an understatement. It almost ended our friendship, not to mention our business. I thought he'd never speak to me again. All because I kept a huge secret from him that I never should have. And that's difficult to come back from."

"This is really making me feel better," Sarah muttered, trying to ignore the way her heart fell at his words. She already knew that there was no chance of keeping Lauren in her life while hiding so much from her, but it wasn't particularly helpful to hear out loud. "Thank you."

"I'm not trying to make you feel better," he replied bluntly.

"So, what, you invited me here to make me feel worse? Mission accomplished. Should I leave?"

Matt ignored her. "How long have you been friends with Lauren?"

He was jumping around subjects again, and Sarah had no idea what point he was trying to make. She sighed and answered anyway. "I don't know, going on…nine years now?"

"You trust her."

"Yes," Sarah said immediately.

"But you haven't told her anything about what's been going on," he noted. "Why not?"

Sarah just stared at him in disbelief. "I don't know. It's not like there's a scary guy in a mask always hanging around making sure I don't talk about him."

"I don't mean about me." Matt was back to pacing the small area near where she sat. "You'd been working at Orion for months before you met me, dealing with Ronan and barely having any money, and who knows what else. But from what I heard the other night, you haven't told her about any of that."

"I don't…what is this? Are you cross-examining me, or something?" she asked him, a slight note of defensiveness creeping into her tone. "I'm a bad friend. I get it."

"No, you're not. You've been trying to protect her. From Orion, and Ronan, and the police. And from me," he added quietly, and Sarah looked down at her hands. "But I'm telling you from experience…if you keep doing that, you're going to lose her."

Even though Sarah already knew it was true, the words hit her hard.

"Why are you bringing this up?" she asked.

"Because I think you should tell her about what's been going on."

Sarah shook her head. "I've already gone over it a million times in my head, Matt. There's no way to tell her about what's been going on at Orion without mentioning the fact that I'm working with you."

"I know," Matt said. "You should tell her anyway."

There was a long pause.

"I…what?" Sarah asked dumbly.

"I don't mean you should tell her who I am," Matt clarified. "Alright? I don't need any more people to be in on that secret. But…that doesn't mean you can't tell her anything. Especially since she already knows that you have some connection to me."

Sarah was still trying to process what he was saying. This was not where she had been expecting the conversation to go. How was in possible that _Matt Murdock_ —the man who, from the moment they met, had spent half of his time threatening her to never talk about anything to do with him, ever—was telling her to be honest with Lauren?

"You're…you're serious?" she asked him cautiously. "Not even a week ago you had me pinned against the wall on the off-chance that I might sell your identity out for a bribe."

"And you gave me a second chance anyway," he said. "Even though I probably didn't deserve it. Even though it was a risk."

Sarah looked down. She knew that Matt felt guilty about the way he reacted that night, but sometimes she wondered whether he'd feel differently if he knew just how close she had come to taking the bribe.

"Regardless, you had some pretty strong feelings about me not telling anyone about you. Like…ever. And now you're telling me to go tell Lauren all about it?"

"I'm not telling you to do anything. I'm just saying that if you're not telling her because you want to protect her…this is one less thing for you to protect her from. If you think the risk from Orion is still too great and you don't want to tell her, that's up to you. But…don't push your friend away because you're afraid of what I'll do."

Sarah was still struggling with the idea of Matt giving her the go-ahead to tell Lauren about him. While half of her brain was still trying to comprehend it, the logical part of her brain started asking questions.

"How am I supposed to tell her what's going on without telling her who you are?"

Matt seemed to have anticipated her question. "For the first few weeks that I knew Claire, she didn't know my name, or who I really am. Just my face. She used to call me Mike. It's not far-fetched that you and I might have a similar arrangement."

Sarah considered it. He had a valid point. But it was a dangerously thin line to walk, and they both knew it. It put Sarah just one misstep away from telling his secret.

"How…how am I supposed to keep her safe? What if someone from Orion finds out that she knows what I do there?"

"She already knows enough to get her into trouble. Besides, if they decide that they think she knows something, it won't matter if she actually does."

Again, Matt had a point. She still couldn't wrap her head around the fact that he was the one convincing her to tell Lauren the truth—or, the partial truth, at least.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked him intently.

He shrugged. "From a practical point of view…keeping someone in the dark when they know they're being kept in the dark is never a good way to ensure they keep a secret."

"That's not the reason," she countered immediately. Matt sighed, obviously reluctant to discuss his reasoning. He took his time before answering, and Sarah watched him closely, tracing the lid of her green tea until he finally spoke.

"The night that Ronan hurt you," Matt said carefully, and Sarah's fingers tightened involuntarily around her drink again. "When you first came home, you asked me how much of your life you would have to give away to all this."

"I remember," she said quietly.

"I think about that night a lot. But that part in particular."

"What does it have to do with Lauren?"

"It was a good question. You've given away a lot. You shouldn't have to give up your best friend, too. I almost lost Foggy because I was keeping secrets from him. I…I know how much harder it makes it just to get through the day."

Sarah looked down at the drink in her hand. She didn't want the conversation to wander too far in the direction of that night.

"So, if I go talk to her, are you going to be…hanging off a scaffolding somewhere, listening in?"

A small smile flashed across his face at her description before disappearing. "I thought about it, but…no. I won't be around. Just you two."

Sarah nodded silently. Her gaze flicked over to where he was still drumming his fingers on the counter, and as she finally took a good look at him—the tension in his posture, the exhaustion in his face and the restless fidgeting—the realization hit her that he wasn't agitated in his usual short-fused bomb way. He was nervous. But for whatever reason, he was giving her the green light anyway. Sarah was touched by the amount of faith he was putting in her so that she could salvage her friendship with Lauren. It was a side of him that she never would have guessed he had when they first met. She wanted to say something to him about it, but she wasn't sure what.

"If you're going to go, you should go before it gets dark," he said, moving on before she could come up with anything to say.

Sarah glanced out the window, where the light was indeed starting to fade. She still hadn't figured out how he always knew that.

"Yeah," she agreed faintly. "Um…good idea."

She stood up from her perch on the arm rest, intending to go grab her purse from where she had left it near the door.

"Sarah." Matt caught her arm lightly as she turned to leave. "Just…be careful. Please. This—this isn't just my own life that we're talking about. You know that, right?"

"I know," she said softly.

He nodded, keeping his face carefully neutral as he waited for her to leave, but she lingered for a second.

Impulsively, she stood on the tips of her toes and hugged him, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck. She only held the embrace for a few seconds—not even enough time for him to register what she was doing, much less respond—before pulling away and grabbing her purse. She looked back just in time to catch a quick glimpse of the surprised look on his face before she left his apartment.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When she got to Lauren's, Sarah let herself in with her spare key. She figured if Lauren could do it, she could too—and besides, she was slightly worried Lauren wouldn't answer if she saw that it was Sarah on the other side of the door.

Sarah glanced down the hall before turning to head into the kitchen, where she could see the overhead light was on. She started to call out to her friend.

"Laur—Jesus!" Sarah exclaimed as she came around the corner to find Lauren holding up some sort of brightly colored kitchen tool up as a weapon. Her exclamation caused the other woman to scream as well before she recognized Sarah.

"Oh, my God," Lauren breathed out, setting down the object that she had been clutching in her hand. "You scared the literal Holy Ghost out of me."

"Sorry. I didn't—what even is this?" Sarah asked, tilting her head as she picked up the item.

Lauren leaned back against the doorway, catching her breath with one hand resting on her round stomach while the other still covered her heart. "I don't know. I think it's supposed to slice pineapples. I came in here to get some water when I heard the front door open."

"Lauren, why wouldn't you grab a _knife_ if you think someone is in your house?"

" _Because_ I already baby-proofed the kitchen in an attempt to be proactive, but now I can't figure out how to open the knife drawer, and—" Lauren caught herself, shaking her head and switching back to the topic at hand. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

"Well…I came to talk to you," Sarah said, suddenly feeling very nervous now that the time to tell her had actually come. "About everything that's been going on."

"You mean your super-secret vigilante life?" Lauren asked resentfully.

" _I'm_ not a vigilante, I just—" Sarah began to protest, before stopping herself and taking a deep breath. "Yes. That."

Lauren just looked at her for a long moment, apparently tempted to reject the offer, but Sarah was fairly certain her friend's curiosity would win out in the end.

"Alright," Lauren agreed reluctantly. "Come on."

Sarah followed her down the hallway and into what used to be the guest room, and had now been transformed into a nursery. Several different swatches of material were laid out on a card table, where Lauren had apparently been trying to pick one out to match the room. Sarah swept her gaze over the walls, which had been painted an ocean blue, with various colorful sea creatures floating around. She recognized Lauren's style immediately in the paintings.

"It looks great," she said softly, still studying the walls.

"It's looked like that for a few months now. But I guess you wouldn't have seen it."

Sarah winced guiltily. This was not going to be an easy conversation. But it had to be done. "I know I haven't been around much. But…if you'll listen to me, I'll tell you why."

"I'd guess it's because you're too busy running around working for the Devil of Hell's Kitchen," Lauren said sarcastically.

"I'm not working for him," Sarah snapped. "He's not my boss. I'm helping him. Or—or he's helping me. I don't really know which one it is anymore. We're…working together."

"Working together?" Lauren repeated dumbly. "You make it sound like you've been assigned to the same PowerPoint presentation. He's a vigilante, Sarah!"

" _I noticed_ ," Sarah hissed.

Suddenly, Lauren's eyes widened as she seemed to register something. "Oh, my God. You work with him."

"I…yeah, that's…what I just said," Sarah faltered uncertainly.

"When you came home that night with all the bruises and the cuts, you said it was from someone you work with. Did he do that to you?" Lauren whispered, looking horrified.

Sarah shook her head immediately. " _No_. No, that wasn't him. He's the one helping me with that whole thing."

"What whole thing? Who hurt you? Was it actually a coworker? What happened to them?"

"I'll get to that, I promise. But…it's going to make more sense if I start at the beginning. Okay? No interruptions."

Lauren slowly lowered herself down onto the small futon near the window. "Okay. No interruptions."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"—you _stapled_ his _face_?" Lauren interrupted for what must have been the twentieth time since Sarah began her explanation half an hour ago.

"Stop interrupting while I'm trying to tell you everything."

"Sorry." Lauren's anger had seemed to fade slightly as she became completely engrossed in the explanation Sarah was giving her.

She had left out certain parts, of course: concealing the fact that she knew Matt's actual identity ended up eliminating a lot of the more antagonistic aspects of their partnership, beginning with the real way they had met. The story sounded odd to her without the inclusion of who Daredevil actually was, but Lauren didn't seem to notice. In fact—much to Sarah's relief—most of her questions were about Sarah herself and not the vigilante.

"And that's when the police showed up and took you away?" Lauren asked when Sarah mentioned that her involvement in some of Orion's failed schemes had caught the eye of the police.

Sarah raised her eyebrows. "How did you know about that?"

Now it was Lauren's turn to look guilty.

"I heard about it," she said vaguely, tucking a piece of blonde hair behind her ear.

"From…who?"

Lauren gave her an exasperated look. "Who do you think? Who eavesdrops on literally everything that happens in your apartment building?"

It took a second for Sarah to realize who she was talking about. "You've had _Mrs. Benedict_ spying on me?"

"Okay, to be fair, she was already spying on you anyway. It's what she does. And she was just really…eager to share what she had learned with me."

"How long have you guys been doing this?"

"Since the night you came home looking like you just broke up with Chris Brown and then wouldn't tell me anything about it. I ran into her on the way out of the building the next morning, and we were both worried about you, and she just said that she'd…keep me updated," Lauren said with a guilty wince and a shrug.

Sarah should have known that Lauren wasn't going to drop the topic as easily as she had seemed to that night. "And what did she tell you?"

"Um, a whole _bunch_ of weird shit. I thought maybe she was just losing it for a while. She said the cops showed up at your door and you left with them, and I kept thinking, 'That's just not possible. Sarah would never not tell me about that.' But…well."

Sarah looked away guiltily, but the fact that Lauren had been hiding something too made her feel better in an odd way. "What else did she say?"

"That she's heard you coming and going at really weird hours. And loud arguing coming from your apartment, and—and things shattering. But she couldn't actually make out what you were saying. She does have a hearing aid, after all. And she said that sometimes, after the arguments, she wouldn't hear anyone leave the apartment, so she figured it was someone you were dating, and they were sleeping there. But I guess if you're arguing with someone who regularly jumps out the window—"

"We don't really argue that much. Anymore," Sarah said.

"Then she said something about how you're dating a dentist? And I thought, 'That's weird, why would Sarah ever date a dentist? Dentists are boring as hell—'"

"—What? I'm not dating a dentist—" Sarah stopped as she remembered the dentist she had made up to get Mrs. B's attention off of the Columbia sweatshirt she had been wearing. She hoped Mrs. B would never mention the sweatshirt or the school to Lauren.

"—and then she showed me all of these crazy articles about dentists who, like, lose their minds and murder all of their patients while they're under anesthesia and save their teeth as trophies, and so I thought maybe you _were_ dating some crazy violent dentist, and I didn't know why you wouldn't tell me—"

"There's no dentist," Sarah interrupted her. "I was just trying to get Mrs. B to stop asking about my love life. Because obviously, she is way too interested in what I do with my time."

"She's just worried about you. She said you even had to hire some lawyers to deal with the stuff with the police."

Sarah's heart flipped at the mention of her lawyers, but she realized with a rush of relief that Lauren hadn't made the connection. Why would she? If one were to guess the daytime job of a vigilante, a lawyer was probably near the bottom of the list. The two were just too contradictory.

"They're Mrs. Benedict's lawyers, actually," Sarah said. "They've just been giving me some free legal advice because I'm her neighbor. I can't really afford to hire a lawyer."

"Do you want to hire one? I will absolutely hire you a lawyer if you think it will help."

"No, Lauren—"

"I'm serious. Have you seen all of the bullshit we have in our kitchen? If we can afford to buy a _pineapple slicer_ and a—a strawberry corer, and, like, an asparagus peeler or whatever, then we can afford to lend you the money for a lawyer or whatever else you need."

"I don't need a loan," Sarah protested. "I just need you to be on my side for this. Because right now I have exactly one person on my side, and he's not as good at late night girl talk as you are."

"Well...yeah, of course I'm on your side. Who else's side am I going to be on? The crazy rapist and the—the guy who—correct me if I'm wrong—kind of sounds like he might be a robot? Jesus. I'm on your side, I just…" Lauren trailed off, shaking her head. "It's just a lot. Way more than I expected. How could you not tell me about any of this?"

"I don't know. I…I didn't want that world to collide with…all of this," Sarah said, gesturing at the ocean paintings on the wall. "You're married now. You're about to have a little girl. You're actually doing all of the stuff that people are supposed to do, and I'm spending my days shoving confidential paperwork in my purse and stitching up vigilantes. It's dangerous, and _super_ against the law—"

"Who cares about the _law_?" Lauren exclaimed. "I care about you being safe."

"This _is_ how I'll be safe. There's no chance of me getting away from Orion on my own, Lauren. I was dying there. I know this is all kind of crazy, but…at least I'm doing something to try to get my old life back. And I have help."

Lauren was quiet for a minute.

"Okay, listen, I have to bring this up. It's kind of my job. I _get_ that Daredevil helps people. And believe me, the all-black pajamas look is hot beyond all belief, but…the guy's dangerous."

"Yes," Sarah agreed firmly.

"And violent."

"Excessively."

"Probably at least a little mental."

"Probably."

"And you trust him?"

"I do." As Sarah said the words, she was thrown by how much she actually meant it. She caught sight of Lauren's skeptical look and continued, "It's as weird to me as it is to you, believe me. But…it is what it is. And you said yourself, he went out the window when he saw you. If he was really as bad as some of the newspapers around here say, that could have gone a completely different way," Sarah pointed out.

Lauren exhaled deeply as she stared up at the colorful paintings on the walls, apparently contemplating everything Sarah had just told her. Sarah fidgeted with the fabric laid out on the card table while she waited for Lauren to process everything.

"What do you call him?" Lauren asked finally, breaking the silence.

"What?"

"Well, you can't call him Daredevil all the time, right? That'd be…weird."

Sarah blinked. She hadn't prepared for that particular question, and she found herself blurting out the first name that came to mind. "I, um, I call him…Leonard."

" _Leonard_?" Lauren repeated. "Wow."

"Yeah…wow," Sarah said, wishing she had been able to think of a name besides that of the rude barista from earlier. Two seconds too late, she remembered that Claire had referred to him as the much more normal 'Mike'.

"Why?"

"Um, it's just…what he wanted to go by."

"Huh."

"What?"

"Nothing, I just thought his name would be something…sexier. Or scarier, at least. Like…Damon. Or Spike. Lestat."

Sarah squinted at the blonde. "You're just naming famous vampires."

Lauren gave her a knowing look as she nodded. "Exactly."

They remained sitting on the futon for a long time, discussing all of the craziness that had been going on in Sarah's life for the past year—or, almost all of the craziness. Despite the fact that she was still keeping the secret of who Matt was, telling Lauren everything else made Sarah feel impossibly lighter. The empty sensation that had been gnawing at her chest for the past few days was finally gone.

Of course, she had forgotten that when Lauren got interested in something, she got _very_ interested. It was almost midnight, and her friend was still spouting off questions and opinions.

"It's so late," Sarah complained. "Can I answer more questions in the morning?"

"Fine," Lauren agreed reluctantly. "But we should probably start by talking about how you actually have him saved in your phone as the devil Emoji. Really?"

"I know, I know."

The phone in question was still in Sarah's purse, where she had again forgotten to take it off of silent.

It wasn't until later, when Sarah had already gotten comfortable under the blankets next to Lauren—who was snoring loudly, something she had unfortunately picked up midway through her second trimester—that she thought to text Matt and tell him things had gone alright. Though she was sure that if he was worried about it, he was probably currently taking it out on a group of criminals somewhere.

Her heart dropped when she looked at the bright screen in the darkness.

_Missed Call._

_Missed Call._

_Missed Call._

_Picture Message_

_Text Message_

All were from the same local number that had been ghost calling her. Hesitantly, she opened the photo message first. Her phone was a few years out of date, so the photo took a few seconds to load fully. It took her a few more seconds to register what she was looking at: it was a photo of her living room, taken from the angle of the outside hallway. Whoever had taken it was standing in her open front door.

Her heart pounded as she brought up the accompanying text message: _Where is Sarah spending her nights?_

Sarah stared at the screen in horror for a long time. Then, with a quick glance over at her sleeping friend, she slipped out of bed to call Matt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More than a few of you have been eagerly waiting for Protective!Matt to show up in this story and spread some violence around, so I'd just like to give those people a heads up that they might particularly enjoy some upcoming events.


	18. War and Peace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone! Ready for some protective Matt/maybe finally getting to see Ronan again? This whole plot arc was one that I originally started writing back sometime around Halloween, which might help explain why this chapter is extra creepy. Sorry about that. Hope you were in the mood for strange and sinister, and also that you like really weird dream sequences as much as I do.
> 
> I just wanted to give another quick shout out to everyone who has made anything for this story: I love love love you! All fan art, edits, and playlists can be found on my profile, and I highly recommend checking them all out.
> 
> **Warning: Violence ahead, along with very strange dream sequences that I'm way too attached to writing.**

### Chapter Eighteen: War and Peace

"You're up early."

Sarah glanced over her shoulder and saw Lauren propping herself up on her elbows and squinting at her sleepily. She was right that it was still early—the sun had only just come up. Of course, for those who had barely gotten any sleep the night before, it seemed awfully late.

"Yeah. I have a lot to do today," Sarah said softly as she slipped her shoes on. She pinched the bridge of her nose, hoping to ward off the headache that was already starting to build somewhere behind her eyes. "I'm sorry."

"I feel like a one-night-stand who's getting the brush off," the blonde muttered resentfully, before letting her head fall back against the pillow again.

"Hey," Sarah leaned over and nudged her friend to stop her from drifting back off. "When does Greg get back into town?"

"Mmm?" Lauren murmured, clearly only half-listening. "I think maybe the day after tomorrow. He has some big meeting this week he can't miss."

"Good. I'll call you to check in, but I'm not going to be able to stay here with you," Sarah said apologetically. "Maybe you could get your mom to come down and spend a few nights, if you want someone."

"Why?" The sleepiness was gone form Lauren's voice as she struggled to sit up more, now giving Sarah a suspicious look. It was rare that either of them ever recommended Lauren spend _more_ time with her mother. "What's going on?"

Sarah's first instinct was to tell her that nothing was going on—when had it become second nature to lie to her friend? She had to stop herself, shaking her head as she picked her phone up from the nightstand and opened the picture message with its accompanying foreboding message before handing it to Lauren.

Lauren looked at the screen for a long minute as she processed what she was looking at. "What the hell? Who sent you this?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?" she repeated, sounding alarmed.

"I mean, I have a pretty good idea," Sarah clarified hastily. "It definitely sounds like Ronan, and I can't imagine who else it would be. But I don't know for sure yet."

In reality, Sarah did know for sure that it was Ronan. Matt had called her back last night after checking out her apartment, and he'd let her know that Ronan's scent was all over it—a thought that was nearly enough to make her gag. But she couldn't very well tell Lauren that Matt was able to pick up on things like that.

"Ronan. The one who tried to…" Lauren trailed off, but Sarah tensed up anyway.

"That's the one," she muttered unhappily as she pulled her sweater on.

"Why are you not freaking out? Is this not a freak out thing? Because it feels like it should be. "

"I _am_ freaking out," Sarah admitted. "I just…I need to do something about it. I can't sit around and think about how much I'm freaking out. It'll just make it worse."

"So, where are you going?"

"The hardware store."

"Right. To buy…hammers. So you can hit people with them," Lauren guessed.

Sarah shot her a funny look. "To buy stuff to change my locks. And maybe another deadbolt, too."

"Is your landlord going to care that you're changing the locks on a rental?"

"I haven't seen that guy since the day I signed my lease," Sarah said. "I don't think he cares what we do so long as he gets his rent on time." Which, if her finances continued the way they had been, might not be guaranteed for much longer.

"You shouldn't go back there. Why not stay here?"

"Lauren, no—"

"I'm serious. Even after Greg gets back, he can just, like, sleep on the couch," she said, waving her hand carelessly over her husband's potential sleeping arrangements. "You can stay here with me."

Sarah flashed a sad smile as she regarded her friend seriously.

"No. I can't. You know that. I need you safe. _Both_ of you," she said significantly, nodding to Lauren's stomach. Then as an afterthought, she added, "And Greg, too."

It looked like Lauren wanted to argue, so Sarah pressed on firmly.

"While we're on the topic of you being safe: You can't be randomly showing up at my apartment now. Not for a while, at least. I don't need you running into anyone else who might also…be there unannounced."

To her relief, the other woman didn't protest. Instead, she just looked frustrated.

"I want to help."

"I know."

"I could help you set up some elaborate trap like in _Home Alone_ ," Lauren offered hopefully.

"I'll keep that in mind as a backup plan," Sarah said. She was about to get up with Lauren spoke again.

"Is he helping you with this?" she asked quietly, picking at a loose thread on her blanket. "The man in the mask, I mean."

"Yeah," Sarah answered after a pause. "Yeah, he is. I called him last night when I saw the text."

"What did he say?"

Not much. Matt had seemed frustrated that she hadn't told him earlier about the ghost calls, which she had to admit she probably should have. He had wanted to go to her place and check it out immediately, but she had convinced him to go to her father's place first and make sure nothing was wrong. The creepy texts had come in a few hours before she read them, anyway—whoever had sent them was surely gone already. Matt had reported back that there was nothing out of the ordinary at her dad's, but that her apartment had reeked of cigarette smoke and cheap rum. He could smell it from the fire escape, which was endlessly weird to her.

After a short discussion, she'd decided to remain at Lauren's for the night. Unlike her own apartment building, this one had security cameras and a doorman, and there was no reason to believe that anyone knew she was there. So, unable to sleep, Sarah had passed the hours last night by slipping a pair of Lauren's headphones in and watching YouTube tutorials on her phone on how to change the locks on her door. As soon as the sun came up, she had quietly slipped out of bed, hoping to leave without waking her friend up.

"He said that he'll find him soon," Sarah reassured her, despite the fact that she wasn't sure she believed it herself. "He's good at that stuff."

"I hope so." The tight worry didn't leave Lauren's face.

"I really have to go now. I'm sorry; I'll call you later." Sarah stood up from the bed and shouldered her purse. "You should go back to sleep. It's Saturday."

"Wait, wait, wait," Lauren said, holding her hand out so that Sarah could help pull her out of bed. "I have things to send you home with."

Despite Sarah's protests, Lauren insisted on loading her down with an entire bag of food and alcohol before she would let her leave. As Sarah left with a full bag of what appeared to be every grocery item Lauren had in her kitchen, she couldn't help but feel grateful to have her best friend back on her side, even as things seemed to be looking worse.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The feeling had faded by the time she got back to her apartment, where she stood outside of her door for a long time before she convinced herself to go inside. Matt hadn't been happy that she was going back home, but he had begrudgingly admitted that there was nothing dangerous left in the apartment.

Sarah slowly walked through the apartment, looking for the signs that Ronan had been there. They were small, but noticeable. The most obvious sign was that all of her photographs were now missing: the assortment of pictures from college she had on her fridge, the old family portrait that had been hanging on her living room wall, even the small photo of her and her dad from her first piano recital as a child, which had been sitting in a frame on her desk.

Swallowing down the disgusted lump that had formed in her throat, Sarah turned away from her desk, only to be met with another disturbing sight: there was a dress laid out on the bed that she hadn't put there. She walked closer and recognized which one it was right away: a simple floral dress, nothing scandalous. But she remembered that she had stopped wearing it to work shortly after she started at Orion, because it always attracted Ronan's attention even more than usual. She wasn't sure what he had hoped to achieve by leaving it out for her to find, but it only made her angry.

She snatched the dress off the bed and threw it in the trash. Then, feeling as though that wasn't enough, she yanked the sheets of her bed too, throwing them in a pile on the floor to be washed. Or maybe burned, depending on how she was feeling later.

Suddenly everything in her apartment felt incredibly dirty, and she wanted to fix it. She moved from room to room, scrubbing every surface she could reach. She cleaned her shower and emptied her fridge, washed all of her dishes and threw all of her towels in a pile to be washed. Obviously, Ronan couldn't have gotten his grimy hands on everything in her apartment, but cleaning it all was one small thing she had control over, and she found it to be surprisingly therapeutic.

But once everything had been sprayed and scrubbed and wiped down, the anxiety returned to Sarah's chest, and it only worsened once it got dark outside. She had already changed the lock and installed the new deadbolt hours ago, but the peace of mind it gave her had been brief. So she dragged each of her dresser drawers out of her bedroom and dumped them out onto the floor of the living room, hoping that the mechanical process of sorting through her clothing—something she hadn't done in a long time—might help keep her mind occupied.

When Matt's familiar knock came at the window that night—earlier than usual—it wasn't unwelcome, if only because Sarah desperately didn't want to be alone anymore. She paused the show she'd been playing for background noise—the Spanish soap opera that she and Foggy had bonded over—upon hearing the knock and pulled herself to her feet, stepping over several different piles of clothing to reach the window.

The two of them had kept in touch over text throughout the day—a condition of her returning to the apartment alone—so she didn't need to catch him up on the missing photos or the dress. She had hoped that would mean they could put off discussing the topic altogether, as even thinking about it made her head spin. But she had no such luck. As soon as he got to her place, Matt was firing off questions about the man—who she now assumed must have been Ronan—that she had seen in the alleyway a few nights prior, and about the number that had been calling her.

"And none of this struck you as something you might have filled me in on?" he asked, after she had explained everything that had been going on more fully.

"It—it didn't sound like anything worth bothering you with," she said halfheartedly. "Sometimes people stand around in alleyways. And silent calls aren't that weird."

Matt pulled his mask off and tossed it on the table before running an agitated hand through his hair, causing some of it to stand up at odd angles. "Did you block the number?"

"No."

"Why not?" he asked sharply.

"Well, I was thinking he might call back while you're here. I thought maybe you could do your, um…super-hearing thing and see if you can pick up on anything to help us figure out where he is," she said hopefully.

Matt just jerked his head in reluctant agreement. "Don't answer otherwise. And don't reply to any messages he sends you."

As it turned out, Bossy Doctor Matt—as Foggy had dubbed him—was nothing next to Bossy Bodyguard Matt, who seemed to have no trouble ordering her around in much the same way he had when they first met.

"I'm not an idiot, Matt," she pointed out. "I'm not going to do anything to encourage him."

Matt halted his pacing with a frown at her words.

"I know you're not an idiot," he said quietly.

"I'm glad. So, are you…all done yelling at me?" she asked, slightly exasperated.

He threw her a dirty look— _Clearly not done, then_ —but seemed to get the point she was making. With a frustrated sigh, he sat down on the arm rest of her couch, moving his head slightly as he finally took in the state of her living room.

"Why is everything you own all over the floor?"

"I'm cleaning," she explained, to which he gave her a confused look.

"This is cleaning?"

"Well, I'm…organizing, now. I already cleaned everything. I don't like the idea that he was in here touching my stuff. And I needed to clean it anyway since I'm hosting a baby shower here in less than a week—assuming that I don't get murdered in my sleep first."

Matt's face darkened slightly, and Sarah quickly changed the topic, not wanting to trigger another lecture on safety.

"You're not usually here this early," she noted. "Couldn't find any bad guys to beat up tonight?"

The vigilante didn't look fooled—or amused—by her quick topic change, but he answered anyway, relaxing slightly.

"The opposite, actually. I finally managed to track down the base of this drug ring operation I've been looking for. Found them all in an abandoned studio a few blocks from where I had originally been searching."

"So, finding a building full of people that want to fight you is a…good night for you?"

"It was more the fact that I didn't need stitches afterwards," Matt said wryly. "And I managed to get in touch with an officer I trust, so I know the police will actually deal with them. Figured I'd call it a night before my luck ran out. Come make sure everything was alright here."

Sarah shook her head in faint disbelief. "I would think you'd want to go home and celebrate by actually going to bed before three am. Do you actually sleep?"

Matt laughed, tilting his head back and resting it against the wall. Sure enough, he did look drained.

"I fall asleep at work sometimes. Does that count?"

"I'd fall asleep at work too if I was my own boss," Sarah said as she got up from her position on the floor. She kicked a few high heels out of her path as she made her way to the kitchen. "Do you want a beer? Since you're done with the crime-fighting for the night."

Matt threw her a doubtful look. "Is it from the same place you got that vodka?"

Sarah made a face as she grabbed two bottles out of her fridge and popped the lids off. "I'm still not ready to think about that liquor without gagging. And no, it's not. This is the good stuff. Lauren gave it to me."

Matt took the bottle she offered him. "How did everything go with her?"

His tone was casual, but it was obvious that he had been waiting for the topic to come up. It made sense—he had just as much of a stake in it as Sarah did.

She leaned against the dining room table, facing Matt's position on the arm of the couch a couple feet away.

"It went well. Like, really well," she said, trying to reassure him. "Even with the phone calls and everything near the end. Having Lauren back in the picture and being able to actually talk to her about some of this…it makes the rest of it seem, I don't know…more bearable."

Matt took a drink from his beer, then hesitated slightly before asking, "How much did you tell her?"

"A good bit of it. Pretty much everything to do with Ronan and Jason. With your parts, I had to…do some editing," she said carefully, glancing sideways at him. "I skimmed over a lot of the, um…early parts."

A familiar look of guilt crossed Matt's face as he nodded slowly. "You thought she'd change her mind about going to the police? If she knew how afraid you used to be of me?"

"No. She wouldn't go to the police if I didn't want her to. But was difficult enough to get her to look past the…conflicting reputations you have in the news," Sarah said, throwing him a cautious glance, but his expression was carefully neutral. "I didn't see any reason to make the conversation even more complicated by going into how we used to be. She just wanted to know if I trust you now. And I told her I do."

Matt seemed slightly caught off guard by the statement, but after a moment he gave her a crooked smile.

"Also, pregnant women get all weirdly protective. I think it's a maternal instinct thing," Sarah continued. "I'm just concerned for your personal safety."

"I appreciate the concern," Matt said with a short, surprised laugh, but his smile quickly faded. "I'd say you need to be more concerned about your own personal safety, though. You're in more danger than I am."

"I have one person that wants to kill me. I get the feeling you have a lot more, just based off of your choice of extracurriculars."

"None of those people know where I live," Matt shot back. "Which brings me back to you staying in this apartment."

"What else am I supposed to do? Just hide from Ronan for as long as it takes to find him?" Sarah asked. "I still have to go to work. Ride the subway. Go to the grocery store. I can't just stop living my life because of this. I'll go _crazy_."

"I know, I just…I told you that I'd keep you safe. That's what I'm trying to do."

"You can't be there to protect me all the time, Matt," she pointed out softly.

"No, I can't," he said resignedly. He had a contemplative frown on his face, tapping his index finger against the beer bottle as he appeared to think about something.

"What?" she asked him suspiciously.

Matt just took a drink from his beer, not answering her right away. She waited impatiently for him to bring the bottle down from his lips and get to whatever he was contemplating saying.

"I'm going to ask you a question," Matt said carefully. "And I'd like you to keep in mind what you just said about trust, and not take this the wrong way."

She eyed him warily. "Okay."

"What would you do if I attacked you right now?"

Sarah's eyes widened. "Wow. Why would I take that the wrong way?"

"I'm not _going_ to attack you," he elaborated. "It's a hypothetical situation."

"You could have opened with that."

"What would you do?" Matt prompted again, ignoring her indignant tone.

"What, are you testing me or something?" she protested. Matt simply shrugged and she let her mouth fall open slightly. "Oh, my God. You _are_."

"I'm not testing you," he said. "I'm…curious. About what your plan is for if something happens and I'm not around."

"My plan? Am I supposed to have a plan?"

"Stop stalling and answer the question." _So, we're still in bossy mode, then._

"I don't know. I'd probably run away," she admitted defensively. "I'm not a fighter. I'm a…run away-er."

Matt tilted his head as he thought about her answer, before taking another long drink from his beer.

"Do you _want_ to be a fighter?"

She blinked. That wasn't what she had expected. "What?"

"I could teach you," Matt said hesitantly, as though he wasn't particularly sure about the idea, either. "Some of the basics, at least."

Sarah stared at him. "You want to teach me…how to fight people?"

"More like self-defense," Matt said. "Or, my version of it, anyway."

"Are you serious? I can't do any of that stuff."

"Of course you can. It's not like I'd be teaching you anything advanced. But I can show you some things that'll help you hold your own against anyone who's trying to hurt you. Like how to hit someone without busting all of your knuckles open again."

Sarah's gaze fell to her hands, where she could still see the small white scars crisscrossing her palms and knuckles. Still, she was doubtful.

"I know you can't see me and all, but I'm not exactly a heavyweight champ," she pointed out, and Matt cracked a grin.

"I've noticed. But you're pretty fast."

"That's just because I do things without thinking first," Sarah countered.

"We can work on that."

Sarah looked at him for a long moment. "You really think I could do that? Learn to fight…anyone?"

He shrugged. "I know you have the nerve for it. You've stood up to me when a lot of other people wouldn't. You stood up to Ronan."

"Yeah, well…that last one worked out really well for me, didn't it?"

"It could have gone a lot worse," Matt said quietly. Sarah just looked down at the bottle in her hand, so he continued. "And if I have any control over it, you won't be in that situation again, but…I can't promise that. But I _can_ teach you what to do if it happens."

Sarah picked at the corner of the label on her beer bottle as she considered it. On the one hand, she and Matt had only just reached a level of trust and some sort of friendship. Him teaching her to fight would require an entirely different level of trust—a very physical kind of trust that she wasn't entirely sure she was prepared to give. On the other hand, she was drawn to the idea of actually being able to have some level of control next time she ran into Ronan.

"So…what, you'd be teaching me good…punching-people technique?" she asked, recalling their conversation from the night he had walked her home.

"Eventually. That's not what we would start with."

"Where would we start?"

"Meditation."

" _Meditation?_ " Sarah repeated, bewildered. "Why? I mean, no offense. I know you're, like…way into it. But I just kind of assumed that was for…you know…" she trailed off vaguely with an uncomfortable shrug.

"For what?"

"Well, like, an…anger management…type…thing," she tried diplomatically.

Matt raised his eyebrows.

"You're saying I have anger management issues?" he asked casually.

Sarah faltered as she tried to figure out how to answer that question.

"Um…no? I more meant that you have—like—a very, um—energetic…temper…" She stopped trying to backtrack when she noticed a small smirk playing across his lips. "You're messing with me."

"A little," he said, the smirk growing more pronounced.

"That's great. I'm so glad you stopped by and interrupted my cleaning spree for this."

Matt chuckled slightly at her annoyed tone.

"I'm sorry. You're right, though. About the meditation. I do use it for that sometimes. Meditating can help me turn anger it into something useful. It's the first thing I learned when I learned how to fight."

"Well, I don't have crazy anger issues," she informed him.

"No, but you have the temperament of a startled rabbit."

"Excuse me?"

"Your first instinct when something goes wrong is to bolt," Matt pointed out bluntly. Sarah opened her mouth to respond defensively, but found that she didn't really have an argument for that. Instead she just shrugged. "Which is fine. But it won't always be an option, and you'll never be able to defend yourself properly if your brain is always screaming at you to run."

She had to admit that he had a point.

"I guess that's…fair," she grumbled. "You really think meditation will help with that?"

"Yeah. What do you currently do when you need to clear your mind?"

Sarah thought about it. Obviously she sometimes obsessively cleaned her apartment, but that wasn't an every day thing.

"I…drink?" she hazarded, holding up her beer.

Matt smirked slightly. "Seems healthy."

Sarah narrowed her eyes at him. "You're right. I actually put on a costume and go beat up bad guys at night. Wait, no…that's not me."

"Alright, alright, point taken," Matt said laughingly, holding his hands up in defeat. "I just mean…there has to be something else you do to calm down. Besides drinking and cleaning your apartment."

Sarah was quiet for a few moments, fiddling with the label again.

"I don't know. Not anymore, really. Playing the piano was always my outlet before all of this. I never really replaced it with anything."

"You don't play at all anymore?"

"No. It's, um…it's just kind of painful, I guess," Sarah explained falteringly. It felt strange to acknowledge out loud. "More so as time goes on. It just reminds me of what everything used to be like."

Matt's expression was difficult to read as a short silence stretched between them. "I don't know that meditating will be able to replace that for you, but…I think it could help. And it'll definitely help you with what I want to teach you. It's pretty quick to pick up."

"When would you even have time to teach me? It's not like you have a ton of free time."

"I have time right now."

Sarah let out a short, surprised laugh. "Like, _now_ now?"

"Why not?" Matt said with a shrug. "Do you have more clothing you need to pile on the floor?"

She looked from the vigilante, who was waiting patiently for her to give an answer, to the clock on the wall. She still had a sneaking suspicion that he had cut his night short so that she wouldn't be alone in her apartment, and while she was definitely grateful for the company, she didn't want him to feel obligated to stick around when he could be out helping someone else.

"You don't have to stay with me, you know," she pointed out softly. "I mean, if you have important things to do. I'm okay without a babysitter."

"This is important." His tone was firm, and Sarah didn't bother to argue.

She regarded him for a few moments before finally setting her empty beer bottle down on the table and getting to her feet.

"Alright," she said reluctantly. "What do I do?"

Matt gestured to the floor in front of her couch, where there was still some space that wasn't covered in clothing and shoes. "Take a seat."

Sarah lowered herself to the floor, settling into a cross-legged position. She expected Matt to sit down in front of her, but instead he remained standing for another minute, tilting his head as he regarded her. His eyes were directed somewhere on the floor behind her, but she could tell he was observing her somehow, and she shifted uncomfortably.

"Your back needs to be straighter."

Sarah rolled her shoulders and sat up a little more. Apparently dissatisfied with her efforts, Matt stepped closer and crouched down next to her. He put one hand on her shoulder, then reached around to place the other hand on her lower back. He pushed her back straighter, pulling her shoulders back as well.

"Your spine should be a straight line from here," he said, tapping two fingers against the base of her neck, then sliding them down to the small of her back, "down to here."

"Okay," Sarah said, very aware of his hands on her back.

Matt stood back up and circled around her until he was in front of her, then lowered himself onto the ground across from her, settling easily into a cross-legged position that matched her own. Even with his combat outfit on, it looked like the pose came much more naturally to him than it did to her.

"Do you have something to tie your hair back with?"

Sarah lowered her hand from where she had been nervously wrapping a few strands of hair around her finger without noticing. She slipped a hair tie off of her wrist and tied her hair into a low pony tail.

Matt let his hands rest on his knees, which almost brushed her own, palms up with his fingers open and relaxed. She copied him carefully.

"Are you going to wake me up if I fall asleep?" she asked, only half-joking.

His mouth twitched up and he gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Maybe. You could probably use the rest."

"Says the guy who never sleeps," she muttered, before taking a deep breath. "Okay. So…what do I do, exactly? Just try not to think?"

"You're not going to be able to clear your head completely," he told her. "Not right away, at least. Try to focus on your breathing. Don't let your mind wander. When it does, bring yourself back."

"Okay," Sarah said resolutely. "How do I do that?" She felt like she was asking too many questions.

"With practice. I'll help you."

Sarah gave him one last skeptical look before closing her eyes. For a few minutes, she managed to keep her head clear. But sure enough, as the silence stretched on, bits and pieces of worry and stress crept back into her mind. The first thought to break its way through was something small about everything she had to do at work that upcoming week. That quickly led into thoughts of Jason, then Ronan and his constant lurking presence in her life, and now in her home. The thought made her heart tick up slightly—

"Your thoughts are drifting. Come back," Matt said softly, bringing her out of the thoughts she had become lost in. She noticed that her shoulders had tightened up again, and she gave them a roll to clear the tension before nodding breathing in deeply and trying to turn the intrusive doubts away. It wasn't easy.

"How long did it take you to get the hang of this?" she whispered after a minute of silence.

Matt chuckled lowly. "I picked it up quick enough. For a kid, at least. But my teacher was a lot more intimidating."

"More intimidating than you?" she asked doubtfully.

"Grouchier, at least."

Sarah cracked one eye open slightly, stealing a glance at him. She hadn't really ever thought about who he learned all of his vigilante tricks from, but she supposed skills like that couldn't have come to him by accident, like his enhanced senses had.

"Close your eyes," he reprimanded her.

Sarah started guiltily before she closed her eyes again and tried to concentrate.

She quickly discovered that focusing on her own breathing wasn't very relaxing either. She became too caught up in whether she was breathing too fast or too slow, and the effect was the opposite of calming. After a while, she listened closely until she could hear Matt's breathing, and tried to match her own rhythm with his. She was pretty sure that was cheating—could you cheat at meditation?—but to her surprise, it seemed to work, if only a little.

As they sat together quietly in the middle of her piles of clothing, some of the apprehension that had sat so tightly coiled in her chest since last night began to unwind. She still wasn't sure how this would help her in any sort of dangerous situation, but for now, she would take the small amount of peace it was providing her.

~*~*~*~*~*~~*~*~

Unfortunately, that small bit of peace slowly unraveled over the next couple of days. Oddly enough, it wasn't due to any more harassing phone calls or messages—in fact, her phone remained silent. And that was part of what was putting her so on edge; she felt like she was going crazy. She tried meditating on her own, keeping her back straight and her mind clear like Matt had taught her, but somehow it didn't seem to work as well as it had the first time.

As she had expected, she began having even more trouble sleeping at night than usual, and when she did manage to drift off, her mind simply went back to mulling over the same disturbing images and possibilities that it did while she was awake. On this particular night, she had resorted to going over some paperwork she'd brought home from work, hoping that it would put her to sleep. Sure enough, the endless numbers did their job, and she eventually fell into an uneasy sleep on her couch, sitting upright with the folder of paperwork still on her lap.

When Sarah opened her eyes, she was driving an old station wagon, feeling strangely calm and relaxed. Outside the car, the weather was sunny and bright, and she was somewhere outside of the city—upstate, maybe, where she used to go camping a long time ago. An old Leonard Cohen song crackled through the car speakers, the haunting sound of its chords a stark contrast to the cheerful weather outside.

She let her gaze wander lazily around the car, eventually landing on the rearview mirror, where she was surprised to see both of her parents in the back seat. They looked young, like they had when she was a child. Her father had no tired circles or confusion on his face, and her mother was actually dressed and smiling, her hair neatly brushed. She watched them laughing and talking to each other in the mirror, but she couldn't hear what they were saying.

"Come sit up here with me," she tried to call back to them, but her voice was a faint whisper and she couldn't make it loud enough for them to hear her. "Why are you guys sitting back there?"

"The back seat of the car is the safest place to be in the event of a crash," a familiar voice recited from the passenger seat. Sarah looked to her right and saw Lauren sitting there, sipping a margarita as she read from what appeared to be a driver's education pamphlet. "No matter where you are seated in a moving vehicle, you should always wear your seatbelt."

Sarah glanced around the interior of the car. "Well…I don't have any seatbelts."

"Ooh. Good point. Um…" Lauren flipped through the pamphlet, creasing her brow as she tried to find the right page for that problem. "I don't see anything for that. I can tell you how to build a washing machine. Or how to identify poisonous mushrooms."

"That's not very helpful."

"Well, maybe if you'd told me sooner that we were going on this road trip, I could have found us a better road guide," Lauren said resentfully. "Or a better car. With seatbelts."

"I know. I'm sorry. Just…see if it has anything in there than can help me."

Lauren hummed along to the song on the radio as she looked through the booklet. It seemed like she was looking for hours.

"You know what I just noticed? This is all in Spanish," Lauren finally concluded, then promptly tossed the pamphlet out of the open window, where it fluttered away. She offered her margarita to Sarah. "Do you want any?"

"I shouldn't drink while I'm driving," Sarah said, shaking her head.

Lauren gave her a confused look. "You aren't driving."

With a frown, Sarah glanced back at the road and saw that Lauren was right; the car was moving, but there was no steering wheel in front of her. For some reason, this made her laugh, and they continued laughing for a long time as the car drove them through the sunny countryside. Sarah kept looking at the sunlight outside, but she couldn't help noticing that out of the corner of her eye it sometimes looked like there was something off about Lauren's face—like she could see the skull underneath her skin.

The wind coming through the windows sent a chill through her, and Sarah realized suddenly that she was very cold, and only wearing a thin floral dress. She looked down and blinked in surprise when she saw it was covered in dark splotches of blood.

"I'm bleeding," she noted casually. She felt fine, so it couldn't be too bad.

"Don't worry. I remembered to bring the bandages." Lauren pulled a first aid kit from somewhere beside her and handed it over to Sarah.

"You always think of all the important things," Sarah said, taking the bandages trying to figure out where the blood was coming from. She couldn't see any injuries.

"I know," Lauren said sadly, leaning back against the seat. She turned her head slightly to look at Sarah, and the skull flickered to the surface again. "I would have made such a good mom."

Sarah whipped her head around in alarm to ask her friend what she meant, but before she could say anything, something in her rearview mirror caught her eye. She looked in the reflection and saw Ronan sitting in the second row of back seats, behind her parents. His beady eyes were locked directly onto hers. She slammed on the breaks in surprise, causing everyone to jerk forward. When her head snapped back up, Lauren and her parents were gone, and only Ronan was left in the car with her, slowly climbing over the rows of seats towards her.

She fumbled out of the car and found that she had managed to park right in the lobby of Orion. Had she done that on purpose? Across the lobby where her old desk waited, she saw Matt striding towards her, wearing his black Daredevil costume.

"Matt. You're here," she said, feeling oddly relieved. She wanted to tell him that Ronan was right there, that he was chasing her, but she couldn't form the words.

"Of course I'm here. I'm your lawyer." He took her hand and pulled her towards the elevator.

Once they were inside, he hit an unmarked button, and the elevator moved sideways.

"Where are we going?" she asked him.

Matt didn't answer. The doors slid open, but there was nothing but darkness outside of them. She squinted into the shadows and couldn't see anything. The vigilante stepped off the elevator and into the blackness, then turned back to her.

"Come on," he said, holding his hand out to her.

After a moment's hesitation, she started to reach her hand out, but the elevator doors slammed shut between them, and the lift abruptly began to rise. She reached for the buttons to go back, but there were many more of them now, and they were all in Braille.

"Dammit, Matt," she mumbled under her breath. "You know I don't know how to do this."

She heard a _ding_ behind her and turned around to see a second set of doors on the other side of the elevator, which slowly slid open.

When she stepped out, she was in Jason's office, but it was much bigger than usual. Jason was standing by a large piano, checking his watch and drumming his fingernails on the lid. Like her dress, his suit was splattered in blood, leaving bright red stains all over his white tie.

"Sarah. Finally. Do you have any idea how late for work you are?" Jason said. "Sit down."

She hesitantly took a seat the bench next to the piano and glanced around the bright office. When she looked to her left, Matt was sitting next to her, now in his lawyer suit. She blinked at his sudden reappearance.

"How did you change so fast?"

Matt's expression unreadable behind his dark glasses. "I didn't."

Sarah frowned, then faced forward again and caught sight of another figure, far behind Jason, pacing in front of the shadows at the back of the room. It was Matt in his Daredevil costume, weaving in and out of the dark shadows far away. She looked from one Matt to the other in concern.

"What if he makes the connection?" she whispered to the Matt sitting next to her, nodding slightly to Jason.

"Oh, he can't see me," Matt informed her seriously. He gestured to his glasses. "You know the old saying: 'If I can't see you, you can't see me.'"

"Well, but…it doesn't really work that way," Sarah said, completely baffled.

"Sarah," Jason interrupted, snapping his fingers in front of her face to get her attention. "Either do your job and play, or go home."

Sarah hurriedly placed her fingers on the piano keys, but then realized that it wasn't a real piano; instead, it was a wooden cutout of a piano. The keys didn't press down, they just remained stationary, one large block of wood attached to the rest of the structure.

"I…I can't play this. It's just wood."

"I didn't ask for excuses, Sarah," Jason snapped. "Don't you even remember how to do the one thing you're good at?"

"It's solid wood," she said insistently, smacking the unyielding surface for emphasis. "It—it doesn't make music."

"Well, then what does it make?" Jason asked skeptically, before leaning forward with slight interest. "Alphabetically, please."

"Oh," Sarah said. That was a reasonable request. Why hadn't she prepared anything? "Wood? Um, it makes…almanacs. A-arrows, and…axe handles."

Jason checked his watch impatiently. "This is taking too long. Skip to 'c', please."

Sarah faltered as she searched her memory. Someone should have taught her this. They probably did, and she just wasn't listening. "Wood…wood makes, um…cabinets. Canes. Clocks…"

"Coffins," Matt chimed in helpfully. "Crucifixes."

Sarah threw him a confused look—how was he so good at this game? He must have taken this test before—and for the first time she noticed Foggy sitting on his other side. The blond man waved at her cheerfully in greeting. She leaned back behind Matt to talk to him.

"What…what is Matt trying to do?" she whispered.

Foggy laughed. "Uh, I think he's trying to help you remember the alphabet. You kind of suck at it. We charge a million dollars an hour for this, by the way."

"No, not this Matt. That one," she said, glancing back towards the Matt in the black mask prowling around in the background.

"Oh, him?" Foggy said, following her gaze. Then he shook his head, giving her an apologetic look. "I haven't really met him. You're on your own with that one."

Sarah leaned forward again to find that Jason was waiting for her to continue, drumming his nails on the fake wooden piano as he checked his watch. "We're all the way to 'n' now, Sarah, and you've barely gotten any answers right."

Matt gave her a disappointed look. "I thought you'd be better at this. We were all counting on you."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Um, okay…'n'…"

Jason threw his hands up in a theatrical show of exasperation. "No, _no_ , we already went back to 'g'. What's even the point? Let's just continue with the original plan."

"What plan?" she asked nervously. She stood up from the piano and backed away until she reached the corner of the office, a deep feeling of dread growing in her chest.

The black-masked Matt in the background stopped pacing, and Ronan emerged from the shadows behind him. The vigilante made no move to stop him as he began to cross the large room.

Alarmed, Sarah looked over at Foggy and Matt, who were now standing beside her.

"Guys. What…what do I do?"

"I don't know. You're the one who invited him to the party," Foggy pointed out. "I mean, he didn't RSVP, but…"

She looked to Matt, who just shrugged. "He's right."

"I can't tell if you're lying. Can't you take those off?" Sarah said, reaching for his dark glasses.

Matt caught her wrist and shoved her backwards, slamming her into the filing cabinet behind her. She stared at him in shock.

"It's not worth the risk," he said simply.

Ronan was beside her now, his hand on her throat; she hadn't even seen him come closer. He gave her a wide, yellow grin before grabbing her hand and jerking her index finger back, breaking the bone with a loud, wet snap. She screamed and tried to break out of his grip, but it was too strong. He moved on to the next finger, snapping that one as well.

A few feet away, Matt and Foggy quietly conversed about a case they were working on, and in the background, Jason just watched impassively, still drumming his nails on the wooden piano.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sarah snapped awake, disoriented to find herself still on the couch; she realized she must have fallen asleep doing the paperwork, which by now had slid off her lap and onto the floor. She fumbled for her cell phone and squinted at the bright screen in the dark: 4:41am. She couldn't put her finger on what had caused her to wake up, but she was abruptly and completely awake. Her heart was pounding and the hair on the back of her neck was standing up, but she didn't know why. Shaking her head, she pressed her palms against her eyes and exhaled unsteadily.

She was still trying to shake off the uneasy feeling when her mind finally caught up with her body and she realized what was wrong: the sound of fingernails drumming on wood hadn't stopped when she woke up. She slowly turned her head in the direction of the sound, which was low and muffled, and coming from the other side of her front door.

She strained her ears to make sure she was hearing it right, but it was unmistakable: someone was at her door, quietly drumming their fingernails against the wood. The sound sent a chill through her. It wasn't loud enough to be considered knocking—instead it was quiet, but insistent. Like they were testing to see if she could hear them.

Her heart raced even faster, and she automatically started to reach for the lamp on the side table, but stopped herself, not wanting the light to spill out under the gap between her front door and the floor and alert the person outside that she was awake. She uncurled herself from the couch and tried to ignore the aches that shot through her back and neck from the position she had fallen asleep in. She slowly crept over to the door, careful to keep her bare feet as silent as possible on the hardwood floor. When she finally reached the door, she flicked her eyes down to make sure all of the deadbolts were done before she peered through the peep hole.

All she saw was the empty hallway. The sounds had ceased for a few seconds, and she began to wonder if she had imagined it. Then it came again. Whoever was out there was crouched out of sight—possibly, she guessed with a heavy feeling of dread in her stomach, in the hopes that she would open the door to see what the sound was.

Nervously, she shifted her weight—only a little, but it was enough to make the floorboard creak loudly. A second later, she screamed as she felt something sharp slice deep into the side of her foot. She reeled backwards, losing her footing and stumbling so that she fell backwards. She gasped in pain as her full weight landed on her recently-healed wrist, and looked back at the front door just in time to see the blade of a knife retreat back through the gap between the bottom of the door and the floor. Whoever was out there had been crouched at the bottom of her door, waiting for her to come close enough for the knife to reach her.

She heard a quiet laugh from the hallway outside. It didn't sound like Ronan.

Ignoring the blood now dripping from the side of her foot, Sarah stumbled over to the coffee table and grabbed her cell phone. She kept her eyes fixed on the front door, trying to concentrate on the ringing sound on the line and not way the door shook as the person on the other side started messing with the lock on the handle. It sounded like they were trying to insert a key—and by now they must be realizing she had changed the locks.

"Hello?" Matt's voice sounded groggy and full of sleep; the one time she needed him to still be out Daredeviling somewhere near her apartment, and he was home sleeping—understandable, given that it was nearly five in the morning.

"There's someone trying to get into my apartment," Sarah told him, speaking barely above a whisper. She tried to keep her voice calm, but based off his reaction she guessed that she wasn't succeeding.

"What?" Matt said, sounding much more alert now. She could hear movement in the background as he—hopefully—got out of bed. "Get in how? The door or the window?"

"The—the front door. He's messing with the handle, and he has a knife—" Sarah broke off with a startled yelp as the person on the other side of the door slammed their fist against the wood with a loud bang. The door shook in its frame; whoever was on the other side definitely wasn't petite.

"Sarah?" Matt's voice was sharp on the other end of the line—he had obviously heard the loud noise.

"It's okay. It's okay. The deadlocks are holding, but I—I don't know how much longer," she said shakily, still keeping her eyes glued to the front door, as though afraid the locks would snap the moment she looked away.

"Okay, listen to me. I'm on my way. Get in your bedroom or your bathroom, whichever will be harder to get into if he gets in."

"Okay," she whispered, staring in horror at the front door, where the man was now sticking his fingers under the gap in the door, wiggling them along the ground like a strange spider. Like a person trying to lure a pet cat to the door to play with them.

"I'll be there soon," Matt said, and with that the line went dead and she was alone again.

Sarah kept watching the fingers under the door for a few moments longer, transfixed by the disturbing movement. Then, snapping out of her daze, she quickly darted into the kitchen and grabbed a large chef's knife from the knife block on her counter. She suddenly found herself wishing that she still had her stun gun, though she knew it probably wouldn't be much help.

There was another loud bang as they slammed their hand against the door once again. Sarah quickened her pace as she made her way over to the bedroom, but froze when she heard a familiar, raspy female voice outside, a bit farther down the hallway.

"What the hell do you think you're doing banging on people's doors at this hour of the night?"

_Shit._

Sarah knew the voice right away. Mrs. Benedict had emerged from her apartment, drawn out by the inconsiderate loud noises, to do what she did best: lecture people about things that were none of her business.

"No, no," Sarah whispered, straining her ears to hear what was happening outside. She took a few steps closer to the front door. "Just go back inside."

"Sorry, ma'am," a male voice replied—definitely not Ronan's voice. In fact, she didn't recognize it at all. She put her eye up to the peep hole again, but couldn't see far enough over to identify the speaker. "I live downstairs, and I locked myself out. I'd given Sarah an extra key to my place, so I was just hoping to get it from her."

Sarah narrowed her eyes. This was Hell's Kitchen; you were lucky to know the names of your neighbors, much less entrust them with extra keys. It wasn't great as far as cover stories went, and apparently Mrs. Benedict agreed.

"I've never seen you around. What apartment do you live in?"

The suspicion was obvious in the old woman's voice, and Sarah prayed that she would pick up on the danger of the situation and get back into her apartment. She couldn't even call out to her to warn her; there was no way Mrs. Benedict would be wearing her hearing aid at this time of night.

"Apartment 428. I moved in last fall."

"No…the fellow that lives in 428 is about forty years older than you and looks like Robert Redford. I know because I watch him take his trash out all the time. Now, I don't think you should be here. You can leave or I'm calling the police."

Sarah leaned against the wall next to the front door, clutching the knife in her hand and straining to hear more. She heard the sound of slow footsteps as the man outside began approaching Mrs. Benedict. By now the older woman surely must have noticed the knife in his hand, right?

"Actually, ma'am, I'd love to explain the situation to you—"

His footsteps quickened.

Cursing every deity she had ever heard of, Sarah fumbled to undo the deadlocks on the front door before yanking it open and stepping into the hallway. A couple doors down, Mrs. Benedict was still lingering in her open doorway, leaning heavily on the walking stick she sometimes used at night when her arthritis was acting up.

The man with the knife—which he was currently holding casually behind his right leg—was still several feet away from the old woman.

"Mrs. B, go back inside," Sarah called out, causing the man to turn around in surprise. When she saw his face, she yet again registered the fact that she didn't recognize him—how could that be possible?

He fixed his attention fully on her now, the old woman behind him already forgotten. Sarah desperately wanted to back through the doorway into her apartment, but Mrs. Benedict still hadn't gone back inside.

"Cute," he noted, nodding at the knife in her hand. "I'd heard you were feisty."

"Sarah—" Mrs. Benedict began worriedly, but Sarah cut her off.

" _Go inside_ ," she repeated, wishing that for once in the woman's long, stubborn life she would actually listen to her. To her extreme relief, Mrs. Benedict stepped back into her apartment, slamming and locking the door behind her.

Sarah was about to dart back into the safety of her own home when she saw the man's eyes flick behind her for just a fraction of a second as a smirk flashed across his face.

Sarah looked behind her just in time to see that a second man, taller and broader than the first one, had come around the corner from the direction of the stairwell, and was reaching towards her. She barely managed to dodge his hand, which had been about to knot itself into her hair.

Luckily, he had come around the corner so fast that he hadn't noticed she was holding a knife, and she saw the surprise register on his face when she swung it wildly at him, making contact on the second swing. The blade cut deep into his skin, dragging along his cheek and across his nostril.

Sarah didn't waste time waiting to see how he reacted beyond the yell of pain he let out. But unfortunately for her, he now he was between her and the doorway to her apartment, leaving the stairwell as the only exit. She was through the door before the man had time to recovery.

She could go down, but that was five flights of stairs, and it would only lead to a lobby that held at best innocent people and at worst more bad guys with knives. Or she could go up, which was only two flights and led to the rooftop, where—hopefully—help could easily find her.

So, she went up, taking the stairs as fast as she could. She was barely one flight up when she heard the stairwell door below her bang open, signaling that the two men were already behind her.

In the few years Sarah had been living in her apartment, she had never had any reason to go up onto the roof. As she burst through the door at the top of the stairs and out onto the roof, she was greeted by a small maze of dark, shadowy structures: utility sheds, water tanks, out-of-use smoke stacks. She hesitated for a split second before sprinting to the right. She had just ducked behind a large water tank about twice her height when she heard the two men come through the same door that she just had.

She had the small advantage of being much lighter than them, so that her footsteps were nearly silent, and any small noise they did make was masked by the loud crunch of their boots on the gravel, making it easy to keep track of where they were.

"Ronan said to bring her in alive," she heard the man with the knife tell his partner. "Beyond that, he doesn't care what condition she's in."

"That bitch sliced my face open," the other man snapped back, his voice tinged with a Brooklyn accent. Sarah heard the distinctive noise of a switchblade flicking open. "I'm not thinking we deliver her in mint condition."

"Yeah, well, whose fault is that?" the first man asked dismissively. "Maybe if you hadn't had so much to drink before we came here, you'd have had better reflexes."

Sarah tightened her grip on her own knife as she tried to keep track of where they were.

"This is the part where we say, 'Come out, we won't hurt you,'" the first man called out, sounding sickly amused by the whole situation. "But let's be honest…obviously we're going to hurt you. It's why we're here, right?"

They were slowly approaching the other side of the water tank. Sarah squinted into the darkness before slowly beginning to back towards the small shed nearby. Seconds after she disappeared around the corner, she heard their boots get louder as they rounded the water tank she had just been hiding behind.

"You know what I haven't done in a while?" he asked his companion conversationally, but loudly enough that it was clearly for Sarah to hear. "Pulled someone's teeth out."

Sarah's stomach turned as she tried to stay calm. If she could get around to the other side of the shed, she could possibly get back to the doorway that led back down into the building without them seeing her.

"I'm sure your nosy neighbor already called the cops. But if you're trying to buy time until they get here, you're out of luck. Trust me, they ain't comin' to help you, sweetheart."

To her dismay, she heard him lowly murmur to his companion that they should split up. Their foot steps went into two different directions, and she kept her eyes trained in one direction while listening closely to the other, still keeping her bare feet as quiet as possible on the gravel surface covering the concrete roof.

She passed by the dark doorway that entered the shed and a hand shot out, latching onto her upper arm with a vice-like grip and yanking her into the small building. She instinctively swung the knife out, hoping to make contact with the person in front of her, but in one quick movement he caught her wrist and twisted it sharply away from his face so that the blade fell to the ground. Before she could scream, his other hand came up to cover her mouth.

"It's me. It's me."

Sarah stilled, relief washing over her at the familiar low voice. She nodded her understanding, and Matt let go of her wrist and lifted his other hand from her mouth.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah," she whispered shakily.

"You're bleeding."

She started to respond, but he suddenly tightened his grip on her arm in warning, tilting his head as he listened to something. Seconds later, she heard the sound of heavy boots crunching on the gravel outside.

Matt knelt and picked the knife up off the ground, then pressed the handle back into her palm and closed her hand around it tightly. He pressed a finger to his lips and she nodded, trying to keep her ragged breathing quiet. She watched as he leaned against the wall next to the open doorway and waited.

It was only a few moments before one of the men came around the same corner Sarah had just rounded. From his heavy footsteps, he sounded like the larger of the two men, the one with the Brooklyn accent.

Matt didn't waste any time, swinging out of the shed as the man rounded the corner and locking a hand around his wrist, slamming it against the wall so that the switchblade in his hand went skidding across the gravel. The man yelled out in pain before swinging his other fist at Matt's face.

Sarah was still watching from inside the dark shed, so she could only see as much of their fight as the small doorway allowed. Even from there, she could tell that the man was larger but clearly not trained in any sort of fighting beyond a basic brawl. Matt, on the other hand, moved with a sort of calculated fury, measuring each hit to be as painful and efficient as possible. As she watched him send his opponent reeling backwards with a kick to the chest, a small voice in the back of Sarah's head couldn't help but question her decision to let him train her. She shook it away.

The fight moved the two men out of her line of sight, and Sarah took a few hesitant steps forward, reaching the doorway just in time to see Matt use the side of the water tank to propel himself into a complicated kick that knocked the taller man out. His head cracked loudly against the roof as he fell to the ground.

As soon as he was down, Sarah heard the second man—the one who had been approaching Mrs. Benedict—running in the direction of the noise, and she hastily stepped back into the shadows.

"Jesus, what the hell is happening over h—" he froze as he came around the corner and caught sight of the masked man standing over his unconscious partner.

"Shit!" he exclaimed, stumbling backwards in surprise. But he didn't move fast enough, and Matt had already caught him by the throat hard enough to lift him clean off his feet before slamming him into the ground. He dropped on top of the man, pinning him in place with a knee on his chest and sending a swift blow directly to his face. There was a loud cracking noise as Matt's fist connected with his nose. Blood gushed from the pinned man's obviously broken nose as he let out a wheezing groan that might have been a scream had he not just had all of the wind knocked out of him.

Momentarily satisfied, Matt maintained a tight hold on the man's right arm, keeping it at what looked to be a painful angle. With his other hand he gripped the man's hair, lifting his head a few inches off the ground.

"Who sent you?"

"Ronan," the man answered immediately, spitting out some of the blood that had run into his mouth and panting. "Ronan Greenfield."

Sarah hadn't realized that her feet were moving until she was only about a yard away from the two men, still holding the kitchen knife in her hand as she watched Matt interrogate the guy who had been terrorizing her.

"How many more are coming?"

"None, none. It was just the two of us, I swear."

Matt tilted his head, and Sarah knew he was listening to the man's heartbeat like a polygraph machine.

"Who else is Ronan working with?"

"I don't know," the man said, breathing heavily. All traces of the cocky menace he'd displayed while pursuing Sarah were now gone. Matt slammed the man's head back against the ground, and Sarah covered her mouth when she saw the dark smear of blood it left.

"Try again."

" _I don't know_ ," he repeated, but when Matt gripped his hair to slam his head again, he hurriedly continued, "I barely know him! I—I sell to him sometimes. Tranquilizer guns, pistols—whatever. I don't know who else he works with."

"Then why are you here?" Matt asked darkly, not yet releasing his grip.

"For money. Why the hell else? He—he's always talking about some bitch who led him on and got him fired. Now he says she stole his job."

Sarah narrowed her eyes at the bleeding man. Was that really the twisted way that Ronan viewed what had gone down?

"So he paid you to what? Break into her apartment and kill her?"

"No, man, no," the guy said, shaking his head furiously. "I wasn't gonna kill her. Just bring her to Ronan. He said to mess with her a little first, to make sure the police don't show up when they're not supposed to."

That explained his comment earlier, and the lack of any sirens despite the fact that Sarah _knew_ Mrs. Benedict must have called the cops by now. She wondered how he had ensured that the right officers received—and then ignored—that particular dispatch call.

"Why now?" Sarah asked him before she could stop herself. She was almost surprised to hear her own voice, tired and cracked. "Why did Ronan wait so long to come after me?"

The man shifted his attention over to her for a second before darting his eyes back to Matt again with a slightly panicked look.

Matt tightened his grip on the man's arm, causing him to grimace in pain. "I think she asked you a question."

"I already told you," he ground out, addressing Sarah. "He thought he was going to be able to get his job back. They're giving it to you instead."

Her eyes widened.

"What are you talking about?"

"That's all I know about it, I swear to God. The guy whines so much I hardly listen to him. I just wanted to the money. Says he'll pay me just to bring him some girl. Didn't care what condition she's in when she gets there, as long as she's in one piece."

Sarah gripped the knife in her hand harder as his words got under her skin. She could see Matt's broad shoulders rising and falling slowly, a telltale warning sign. Unfortunately for the man on the ground, he didn't know well enough to recognize it, and he continued.

"It was an easy job. What was I supposed to do, huh? Didn't know the bitch had a bodyguard—"

Matt hit him with another jab to his already broken nose.

"Shut up," he growled over the pained yelp the blow elicited. "Where did he tell you to bring her?"

"He didn't. We were supposed to keep her with us, and he was going to call us when he was ready."

There was another pause as Matt determined if the man was lying. Apparently he wasn't, because Matt didn't repeat the question. Instead, he bent his head down lower, close to the man's ear.

"Your problem with her ends now. Understood?" Matt growled, but instead of a reply he just received a pained groan through gritted teeth. Unsatisfied with his answer, the vigilante roughly twisted the man's arm even more. Sarah heard a sickening crunch as his arm dislocated, followed by a muffled scream as Matt immediately covered the man's mouth. When the noise died down, he removed his gloved hand slowly. "I said, understood?"

"Understood," the man gasped.

"If something happens to her, I'll be holding you personally accountable," Matt told him, speaking slowly and evenly to make sure he got the point. "So I'd say it's in your best interest to cut off any and all contact with Ronan from this point forward. In fact, I'd recommend taking your money and leaving this city altogether."

The man nodded as well as he could with Matt still gripping his hair in his fist. At his agreement, Matt slammed his head back against the ground one last time, knocking him out. The vigilante stayed still for a second, breathing hard, before he slowly lifted his knee off of the unconscious man and got to his feet.

The rooftop seemed impossibly silent as he turned to Sarah.

"Are you okay?" he asked her lowly.

She didn't answer immediately, still staring at the bleeding man and how lifeless he looked laying on the gravel.

"Sarah?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm…fine," Sarah said faintly.

"Then you should go back inside," he said. His brusque tone caught her off guard, and she finally tore her eyes away from the guy on the ground to look at Matt.

"Are you not coming?"

"I'll be there soon."

Still not understanding what was going in, she didn't move. "What are you going to do? Move them?"

"Eventually."

"What…what does that mean?"

Matt leaned down towards the taller of the two man, the one he had brawled with first. He grabbed him by the collar of his jacket, dragging him over to the water tank and propping him up into a sitting position against it. Then he stood over him for a second before turning back to Sarah and answering her question.

"The most important thing right now is making sure word that I'm helping you doesn't get back to Ronan," he explained, still speaking in an almost curt tone. "Because after him it's a straight shot to Orion finding out and coming after you."

"That…doesn't answer my question," Sarah said.

There was another long pause as Matt struggled to find the words he was looking for. "There's no point in convincing one of them to keep his mouth shut if the other one's going to go running to Ronan as soon as he wakes up. So…I need to have a talk with him."

The realization of what Matt was planning to do hit her hard.

"Oh," she said, unable to think of anything more coherent to say. "Um…right."

"It won't take long. I'll be able to hear if anything's not right at your place, but…make sure your door is locked anyway. Alright?"

"Right," she said shakily. Her mind was finally starting to fully register the events of the night, and it was making her stomach turn. "Okay."

Matt walked over to her slowly, as though trying not to startle her. He stopped a few feet away.

"Can I have that?" he asked her quietly, nodding towards the knife she still clutched tightly in her hand.

Sarah stared at him, then lowered her gaze down to the blade by her side.

"Why?"

He pressed his lips together in what might have been a wince before answering her, though he sounded reluctant to do so. "Because…the angle of your knife will work better for what I'm going to do than the ones they have on them."

Sarah closed her eyes for a moment. _You asked_ , she reminded herself, wondering at what point her life had taken this kind of turn. After a moment's hesitation, she handed him the knife wordlessly, but for some reason still couldn't bring herself to move.

"Sarah," Matt said softly, starting to take another step towards her, but then stopping and keeping his distance. "You can stay if you want, but...I don't think you're going to want to."

She just gave a tight nod, fairly positive that he was right in that assumption. Then she quickly turned and walked away, down the stairs and back into the building.


	19. Surprise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter has semi-graphic descriptions of violence, and non-graphic mentions of past sexual assault.
> 
> Hi, everyone! I'm so sorry I took forever getting this chapter up! Sometimes Real Life takes up a lot of time. I rushed a bit on the editing, so please forgive any rough spots until I can fix them. On top of that, I have a lot of pre-story notes this time. Sorry!
> 
> 1\. I know this is AO3 and not Fanfiction.net, but I post the story on both sites and I just posted a big ole love note to them for making my story break 1000 reviews. It reminded me that even though my reader base on this website is so much smaller, you guys are so amazingly dedicated and smart, and I adore talking about the show and the story and random stuff with you. And I hope to keep sharing this story with you guys and getting your feedback on it for a long time!
> 
> 2\. HOW ABOUT THOSE DAREDEVIL SEASON TWO TRAILERS, Y'ALL. So many things that I was not prepared to handle. I might have listened to Matt saying 'Oh, sweetheart' in that condescending tone a few dozen times. 
> 
> 3\. Now that I've gotten the fun stuff out of the way, I have to address a rather unpleasant topic that has popped up repeatedly lately: plagiarism. Specifically on the website WattPad. There is only one WattPad user to whom I have given permission to post this story for me, and that's LucarioMaster41. (I don't post stories there myself, because I'm technologically incompetent and can't handle learning the layout.) However, several other users have been posting my story without my knowledge or permission. I worked really hard on this story, and to see someone posting it as their own work is very upsetting and discouraging. If you see the story on WattPad or any other site under any name other than my own or the user mentioned above, please let me know ASAP.
> 
> 4\. I plan to post one more chapter between now and the Season 2 premiere. Then there will be a bit of a delay because 1) I'll need time to watch/process/obsess, duh and 2) The weekend after Season 2 premieres I'm going to WonderCon, which is like Comic Con but smaller and in Los Angeles. If by any chance anyone else is going, let me know! Otherwise, know that I'm not abandoning anything, I just need to go be a nerd for a while.
> 
> Okay, I'm so sorry for rambling on for so long, but as a thank you for waiting, I give you a chapter that is 99% Matt and Sarah scenes.

### Chapter Nineteen: Surprise 

In general, Matt Murdock preferred to fight hand-to-hand over using a weapon. The temptation to lose control was already great enough when Matt was fighting criminals with his hands; anything that made it easier to inflict damage only made the chance of slipping and going a step too far more likely. However, if his adversary was the one who chose to bring a weapon into the fight, Matt wasn't necessarily above using it against them. When it came right down to it, there were a lot of things he wasn't above.

In this particular scenario, the two men on the roof had brought knives to a fight they had already been certain they were going to win: two of them against someone much smaller, someone they had already injured. So the use of Sarah's kitchen knife—serrated and much sharper than the ones the two men had brought with them—seemed only appropriate, and as Matt knelt in front of the taller of the two men and pressed the blade against his skin, he found no sympathy for him.

"What does Ronan want with her?" Matt asked, his voice deadly calm. He had already asked him the same questions he had posed to the other man: who Ronan was working with, what he had hired them to do, where they were supposed to meet him. Unfortunately, he'd been unable to shed any more light on those topics than his partner had.

"No clue," the man said immediately, but his heart jumped a few ticks. Matt pressed the blade of the knife—which was already coated in a good amount of the man's blood—harder against his throat.

"Don't make me ask you a second time."

"What do you think, man?" he spat out, his pained tone turning frustrated. "He didn't say outright, but…shit. The way he talked about her, it—it's not hard to take a guess."

"And you have no problem delivering someone to a fate like that," Matt noted, clenching his jaw, moving on before he could dwell on that part too much. "Are you two the ones who have been following her?"

"No. No, I swear I'd never seen her before tonight," he said frantically. "We got an address and a key, that's it. Anything else going on with that chick is Ronan himself doing it."

"How do you know he hasn't hired other people?"

"Ronan? That guy doesn't have enough money for that."

"Enough to catch your interest, though."

The man would have been smart to not answer. Unfortunately for him, he made the mistake of continuing to speak—apparently with the hope of swaying the vigilante who was currently pinning him against the brick wall at a painful angle.

"It sounded like an easy job," he ground out. "We didn't—we didn't know you'd be here, we wouldn't have—"

His words turned into a strangled his of pain as Matt kept the pressure of the knife even, but tightened his hold on the man's arm and twisted it harder.

"So, you only came because you thought she would be alone and easy to get to," Matt said, his voice low and harsh. "You really think that's helping your case?"

Matt breathed in deep through his nose, trying to ignore the way everything in him was itching to beat this man to a bloody pulp. It had infuriated him to hear the two of them eagerly discuss their plans for Sarah as they had tracked her across the roof, so confident and gleeful in their mission: two grown, armed men against one injured woman they had assumed was alone. It had made him angrier that they had almost been right, that she almost had been caught alone. That if they had gotten into her apartment before she'd been able to call him, he never would have gotten to her in time.

And farther down, a small, irrational part of him just wanted to hurt the two men for bringing the devil in him out to fight in front of the one person whose trust he had been trying so hard to keep. And if Sarah's heart rate and speechless shock before she left the roof were any indication, he might have just lost that trust.

The man took advantage of the brief pause in Matt's interrogation to try to make a grab for the knife. But Matt caught his arm easily and wrenched it the other way, then flashed the knife down from his opponent's throat to the front of his shoulder, driving the blade in just below his collar bone: not a lethal target by any means, but an extremely painful one.

The man gritted his teeth and knocked his head back against the wall.

"Jesus! Listen, listen, how about you can t-take the money, okay?" he said, still foolishly trying to negotiate. "It's almost a thousand bucks."

Matt grew still, and when he spoke again he couldn't keep the deep disgust out of his voice.

"You're telling me less than a thousand dollars is all you needed to deliver a girl to a man that you knew was planning to hurt her?"

"I…I…" the man stuttered, before falling silent. He panted raggedly, obviously trying and failing to come up with another plan to get out of the situation. Matt cocked his head at the silence.

"You two were so talkative when you were stalking her across the roof," he observed darkly. "What happened?"

He received no answer. It was frustrating how little information he was able to get out of him; Ronan had been smart to not divulge anything to them about his whereabouts. But surely the man had to know something Matt could use, if he just kept pressing for more.

Matt gripped the handle of the blade harder, prepared to give it another twist—or perhaps find a more painful placement. But in the silence, beneath the man's thundering pulse, Matt could hear a softer, more familiar heartbeat floating up from a few floors down, accompanied by an equally familiar voice. Sarah was swearing softly to herself, and he could smell soap, disinfectant, and blood.

He paused reluctantly, grinding his teeth as the sound pulled him back from the temptation to beat the man bloody. He had to remind himself that the longer he stayed up here trying and failing to learn something new, the longer Sarah would be down in her apartment, alone. He inhaled deeply, focusing on getting himself back under control, before turning his attention back to the person on the other end of the knife.

Matt kept the end of the interrogation quick, but that didn't mean he didn't make it painful.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

Several floors down, Sarah cursed under her breath as she pressed an alcohol-soaked cloth against the deep cut on her foot.

"…kind of asshole just cuts people's feet up," she muttered angrily.

The smart of the rubbing alcohol provided some distraction, at least, from the events of the night. She didn't want to think about how close the two assailants had come to hurting her, and she didn't want to think about what was happening to them on the roof right now, even if she knew they fully deserved whatever it was.

She reached for a bandage and glanced at the clock: about twenty minutes had passed since she'd left the roof. Mrs. Benedict had poked her head out of her apartment as soon as she had heard the sound of the stairwell door open and close, and Sarah had distantly heard her asking concerned questions, but she'd had no energy left to answer her before retreating to her apartment. The deadlocks felt useless now, but she had bolted them anyway. Automatically she had found herself heading into the kitchen, where she had grabbed a bottle of whiskey from on top of her fridge and taken a deep swig, wincing at the sting but welcoming the slight numbing sensation, before placing the bottle back in its spot. She had then limped into the bathroom, which was where she found herself now, perched on the bathroom counter as she wrapped her foot in a tight bandage.

True to his word, Matt wasn't long. Sarah had just finished wrapping her foot when she heard him tap on her window. She gingerly hopped down from her perch on the bathroom counter, testing her weight on her foot before unsteadily making her way over to the window to let him in. His black-clad outline on the fire escape was no different from usual, but somehow tonight he looked so much more like Daredevil than he had in a long time.

Sarah began to walk back towards the couch, but stopped when she glanced over her shoulder and saw that Matt wasn't moving from his spot in front of the window. His shoulders were tense, and his posture was still faintly reminiscent of a fighting stance, though he didn't seem to realize it.

"You're limping," he noted quietly. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah." Sarah folded her arms and pulled her sweater tighter around her as she swept her gaze down to her bandaged foot. "I, um…I think it might need stitches at some point. Do you think that maybe your friend Claire would be able to help me out again?" she asked him hopefully.

"I can see if she'll answer. She's working the day shift lately, so she's probably sleeping," Matt said, reaching for a zippered pocket on the side of his black pants.

"No, no, don't wake her up," Sarah protested before he could withdraw his phone. "It's not that bad, I can go after work. It's not like massively bleeding or anything. Besides, I can't be late today. Jason has some big meeting he wants me to help him prepare for, or something."

Matt didn't look happy with her decision, but he didn't argue. "Alright. I'll let her know you might be stopping by the hospital later, then."

"Thanks."

"You're not hurt otherwise?" he said, taking a step closer and reaching a gloved hand out towards her previously-sprained wrist, which now ached dully once more from when she had landed on it earlier.

Still on edge from being chased earlier, Sarah instinctively tensed, shifting her weight onto her back foot as he stepped nearer to her. It wasn't a conscious reaction; her fight or flight instinct was still on hyper drive, and as Matt had not-so-tactfully pointed out the other night, flight was pretty much her default setting.

Matt stilled, immediately picking up on her reaction. Something flickered across the bottom half of his face and he slowly retracted his hand, stepping back to his original position in front of the window.

"Sorry," he said shortly, stepping back.

A pang of guilt hit her chest, and Sarah closed her eyes briefly and shook her head.

"Matt, no, it's not—" she started to explain, but he abruptly moved onto the next subject.

"I don't think you have to worry about Ronan sending more people after you," he said, the softness in his voice replaced by a business-like tone. "From what the guys on the roof had to say, he has pretty limited resources. With any hope, he'll think these two took the money and skipped town."

She was relieved to hear that Ronan was still as mildly incompetent as ever, and that he didn't have as far of a reach as it had seemed lately. Never knowing where he was made it feel like he was everywhere, but she knew that wasn't true.

"They didn't know where he's hiding out?"

Matt shook his head regretfully. "No."

Sarah bit her lip, trying to ignore the way her heart fell at the news.

"What about the cops?" she asked. "How does someone just make the police not come?"

"All he needs are a pair of cops who will respond to the alert saying they're nearby and will check it out. Then…they don't."

It wasn't difficult to guess which cops Ronan might have been able to talk into taking on that particular responsibility. Sarah sighed and ran her hand through her hair. "Good thing I don't happen to know two cops who really don't like me, then, right?"

"We don't know for sure if it's them, but…it seems like a safe guess. The plus side is that it's not a great plan. There's always the chance other cops will be nearby and decide to respond to the call as well. Obviously it worked this time, but it's shortsighted. He's getting cocky."

_He's always been cocky,_ Sarah thought. Short-sighted and arrogant, which mixed well with his general disgusting demeanor and obsessive tendencies. But she didn't say any of that out loud, not wishing to talk about Ronan any more than she had to. Right now she was doing alright at keeping her mind from wandering to dark places, and she wanted that to continue.

"How'd they get through the front door?" Matt asked, interrupting her thoughts.

There was a short pause as Sarah hesitated.

"They didn't," she said reluctantly. Matt just cocked his head, his mouth a grim line as he waited for her to elaborate further. "I opened the door. They…they didn't get inside, I went outside."

Matt rubbed his mouth in agitation, and when he spoke his carefully controlled tone was betrayed by the twitch in his jaw. "Why?"

"Mrs. Benedict was out there talking to them. I couldn't just stay inside and let something happen to her," Sarah said, recognizing the frustrated tone that so often preceded a lecture from Bossy Bodyguard Matt lately. She quickly continued, hoping to avoid it. "And I know it was stupid it was to leave the apartment, so can be maybe just…skip the part where you yell at me for that, please? You can be extra grouchy about the next thing."

If the way he pressed his lips together tightly was any indication, he had been about to do just that, but he held back. Instead, he reached up and pulled his mask off tiredly, then used his forearm to wipe some of the sweat off his forehead. Sarah blinked as she caught sight of blood running down the side of his face; it hadn't been very visible near his ear and jaw line when he'd had his mask on, but now she could see it clearly, bright red against his skin. It was coming from a small gash near his left eye that cut across his temple. Another pang of guilt hit her; she hadn't even thought to ask if Matt was hurt, despite the fact that he'd been the one actually fighting tonight.

"Your face is bleeding," she said in surprise. "I didn't think…it didn't even look like you even got hit."

"Barely. The cut's from earlier," Matt said with a dismissive shrug. "I didn't bother putting a bandage on it when I got home, and it reopened during the fight."

Sarah winced as she looked closer at the cut on his temple.

"I didn't realize you went out tonight. Or, last night, I guess," she said, still disoriented by what time it was.

"Yeah. For a few hours. I stopped by here a little after midnight, but you were sleeping. I didn't want to bother you."

Sarah fidgeted with her hair as she studied the exhausted vigilante in front of her, and the way he barely seemed to register the blood running down his face.

With a sigh, she paced—with only a slight limp—into the kitchen and got a small bowl and a clean dish towel from the cupboard, filling the bowl with hot water from the tap. On her way back she grabbed the first aid kit off of the counter—it seemed as though it was always within easy reach these days.

When she came back into the living room, Matt was still leaning against the windowsill, frowning slightly as he listened to her rummaging around. He turned his head towards her when she stopped beside him, not saying anything, but she could tell from the way his head moved slightly to track her movements that he was closely focused on what she was doing. The coiled tension in his form almost made her want to step away again, but she reminded herself that it wasn't aimed at her.

She set the items in her hands down, then slowly lifted herself up onto the window sill, careful not to put too much pressure on her sore wrist. She perched on the wooden ledge, angling herself towards him and curling one leg underneath her, letting the other hang down so that her bandaged foot brushed against the wall of her living room.

"What are you doing?" he asked her quietly.

"I already cleaned a bunch of your blood off of this windowsill once," she said, keeping her voice purposefully casual as she dipped the cloth into the hot water. "I don't need you bleeding all over it again."

"You don't have to do that."

"I know," Sarah said. She lifted the damp cloth up to Matt's face, pausing for just a second before pressing it gently against the cut on his temple. She watched his reaction carefully: he was tense, but he didn't make any move stop her.

"I'm sorry," he said suddenly. "If I just took us back a few steps. Again."

"You didn't."

He looked doubtful. "I know that what happened up there didn't…sit right with you."

Sarah was quiet for a second, trying to formulate the right words for what she was thinking as she dipped the cloth back into the bowl. The blood immediately began to diffuse into the water. "I just…the whole torture thing is kind of a new concept in my life, you know? I have to cover my eyes when Lauren makes me watch _Game of Thrones_ , and that's just on a screen. I'm not used to it up close and personal. I mean, I kind of hope that I never get used to it, if that makes sense? But…it doesn't mean that I don't get that it was necessary. And I'm not asking you to apologize for it, Matt."

Matt didn't reply right away, and when he did it was so quiet she could barely hear him.

"The first time I ever met Claire…I ended up in a similar situation with a guy up on her roof, too," Matt said. She could tell he was gauging her reaction to what he was saying. "He ended up in a coma."

Sarah's hand wavered slightly at Matt's confession as she brought the damp hand towel back up to his face. She took a steadying breath before she pressing the cloth to his skin again, gradually cleaning the blood away.

"How, um…how did Claire react to that?" Sarah asked carefully. She remembered how calm Claire had been the night she'd met her; it seemed like very little could ruffle the woman. Probably from being a nurse in a city like Hell's Kitchen.

"She seemed to understand, at first. She kind of helped me do it, actually. But…in the end, it drove her away," he said, then faltered for a second before correcting himself. " _I_ drove her away. That side of me. I almost lost Foggy because of it, too."

Sarah thought it was interesting how he talked about his darker personality traits almost like they were a separate person within him, but she didn't point it out. She slipped a small disinfecting pad out of the packaging.

"This'll sting a little," she warned him softly before pressing the alcohol pad to the cut on his face. She focused on what she was doing for a minute, grateful for the excuse to get her thoughts together before speaking. "You being capable of violence isn't a new and shocking aspect of your personality for me, Matt. I've met that side of you more than a few times."

"I know."

At the look of guilt that passed over his face, Sarah realized that Matt was misinterpreting the point she was trying to make.

"Meaning that if I was going to bail, I would have done it already," she clarified gently.

Matt furrowed his brow as he considered what she was saying, leaving her to continue her ministrations in silence. Sarah looked down at his gloved hands and noticed for the first time that, despite the dark color of the fabric, the dried blood covering them was still clearly visible.

"Does it…does it ever get to you?" she asked him tentatively. "Hurting people like that?"

"Not so much while I'm doing it. It's a means to an end," Matt said, then after a moment's hesitation he continued. "But after it's done…yeah. It takes a toll."

Sarah felt a mixture of relief and guilt wash over her. Relief that Matt did, in fact, struggle with the things he did, and guilt that his conscience had taken another hit over something he'd done for her. A part of her wanted to tell him she was sorry for adding to that toll, but she had a feeling that it wouldn't go over well. Instead, she just pressed a small white bandage to the cut on his forehead, closing the wound up temporarily.

"That's the best I can do."

Matt flashed her one of his half-smiles, though it was tired. "Thank you."

"It's no problem," she said with a small shrug, returning the smile. She had actually been relieved to have something methodical to focus on, to keep her mind from wandering too close to everything that had just happened. "Thanks for getting out of bed in the middle of the night to come save me."

"I haven't forgotten that you did the same for me."

"I think moving scaffolding is a little less dangerous than fighting knife-wielding bad guys," she speculated, then thought about it for a second. "Although I did have the added disadvantage of you still being kind of a dick at that point, so…"

Matt let out short, surprised laugh. "Implying that I'm not one now?"

"You have your moments."

They sat there in silence for a few minutes before Matt spoke.

"How long until you have to be to work?"

Sarah squinted at the clock on the wall, then groaned: it was almost seven o'clock in the morning. "Ugh…like an hour and a half."

"I'll stay with you until you leave. Just in case."

Sarah took a good look at him, studying the dark circles under his eyes. "How much sleep did you get between getting home last night and me calling you?"

Matt shrugged the question off. "I'm fine. I'm awake."

"That's not what I asked," Sarah retorted. As she spoke, she realized that she was unintentionally mimicking the same words Matt so often said to her when she avoided his questions. If the faint grin that ghosted across his face was any indication, he'd noticed as well, but he still didn't answer her.

"You said yourself that you don't think anyone else is coming. And it's already getting light out," she said as she glanced out of the window. "I'm okay. You can go home and get some sleep."

It was obvious to both of them that Matt wasn't going to listen. Sure enough, he just raised an eyebrow at her, looking thoroughly unimpressed with the suggestion.

"You know that's not about to happen."

Sarah leaned her head back against the window frame, observing him. It occurred to her that she hadn't really noticed when Matt had stopped haunting her apartment out of fear that she would turn him in and instead started sticking around to keep her safe. At some point he had just become a regular presence at her place, and strangely enough, she found that she no longer minded. In fact, the longer they sat together in the window sill that early morning, the more Sarah's anxiety slowly eased, and in the back of her mind she began to wonder if the reason meditating on her own hadn't worked was because the meditation wasn't what had been calming her down after all.

She tried not to think about what it said about her that the only person who could make her feel better lately was someone as messed up as Matthew Murdock.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

Sarah's day at Orion was long and strange. The meeting Jason had been so adamant about her preparing for never happened; whatever important person he had been anxiously waiting on didn't show up for the appointment. Sarah was instructed to stay in the office in case the mystery guest showed up late, but the hours passed and no one came, though Jason came out of his office at regular intervals to make sure. Five o'clock came and went, and she still hadn't been given the green light to leave.

Finally, she got up from her desk and knocked lightly on Jason's open door to get his attention.

"Jason?" she said, her hushed voice sounding loud in the silent office. "It's…it's almost six." _My foot is killing me and I'm going to fall asleep at my desk._

Jason looked up from his computer, observing her thoughtfully. Sarah shifted her weight to her uninjured foot uncomfortably.

"Did you ever meet Wilson Fisk?" he asked her, seemingly apropos of nothing.

Sarah blinked. "Um…no, not really. I saw him come into the building once or twice to do business, but I think he was busy doing other things most of the time." _Like blowing up Hell's Kitchen and fighting with masked men._ "Mostly I just dealt with Wesley."

He nodded slowly, then gestured to the seat in front of her. "Please, sit down."

Sarah groaned internally. She had really been hoping he would just tell her she could go home.

"Mr. Fisk is…a very interesting man. Not the most stable character, certainly," Jason said once she was seated. Sarah had to physically restrain herself from raising her eyebrows at that comment coming from a man who occasionally smeared other people's blood all over his own clothing. "But hard-working. Enigmatic. And undeniably the glue that held much of Hell's Kitchen together. He had all different kinds of businesses on his plate, and he managed to juggle all of them with little in-fighting between his employees."

Sarah wasn't sure if she was supposed to look impressed or not; the man had been a criminal king pin, not a saint—and he did get caught in the end. She settled for nodding with a vaguely interested look on her face.

"He had enough safety nets in place to ensure that no one could just step in and take over the reigns. But that doesn't stop a lot of people from desperately trying to build up their own enterprises in his absence, wanting to fill his shoes. Do you know what the problem is with trying to fill Wilson Fisk's shoes, Sarah?"

To be honest, Sarah's sleep-deprived mind was having a bit of difficulty following this long speech at all, and she was caught off guard when he asked for her input. "Oh. Um…"

"It's impossible, is the problem," he answered for her. "It took him years to get his fingers into that many pies, and no one can just replace him."

"That's…what I was going to say," she mumbled in agreement.

"A lot of people think that his assets are in a sort of legal purgatory because of how many people are laying claim to them. And in a way, they're right: all of his stakes in various companies—shipping yards, stock exchanges, legal firms, clinics—have been tied up in red tape for months. But it's not because there are too many people trying to claim his assets. There's just one, and that one person has been taking their time making sure all of those safety nets are secure before splitting up the empire. But it's going to happen soon."

Sarah was paying closer attention now. She couldn't help thinking that it seemed slightly ominous for him to be sharing all of this with her.

"I want a piece of that empire. I don't want to take over all of it, by any means. But my goal in life is not to be the head of security forever, Sarah."

He so obviously worked outside the parameters of his job description that she had almost forgotten 'head of security' was his official title, and not just a more general 'creepy executive'.

"I think you're very interesting. Would you like to know why?" Jason paused, but Sarah got the impression she wasn't really expected to answer. Sure enough, he continued. "Because you have no loyalty to anyone here. Everyone else in this place wants to claw their way to the top, and they make alliances to do so. But you…you just watch everyone."

Sarah kept her face carefully neutral, still not sure where he was going with this. "Why are you telling me this?"

"I want up. You want out. If you help me to get the stake in this company that I deserve…I'll end your contract once I'm in charge. You and your father's information will be wiped from the company records completely."

Sarah was wide awake now. The deal sounded like Round Two of 'Here's A Zillion Dollars To Turn In Daredevil', but he hadn't brought the vigilante up yet.

"Help you how?" she asked slowly.

Before Jason could answer, there was a knock at the door. Standing in the doorway was a girl maybe a few years younger than Sarah that she vaguely recognized as an employee she occasionally saw on the second floor.

"Sorry to interrupt," she said. "The tech guys need you to approve some things before they can install them. They're in the second floor control room."

Jason nodded, his signature broad smile fixed on his face. "Thank you so much. I'll be right there."

The girl glanced briefly at Sarah and then disappeared from the doorway.

"We'll continue this conversation tomorrow," Jason told Sarah, getting up from his desk. "I have a lot more that I'd like to discuss with you."

Sarah tried not to look disappointed. It seemed as though Jason's rambling lecture had finally been getting to something important, and now she had to wait until tomorrow to find out what it was.

A few minutes later, as Sarah began to walk to the subway station so she could finally go see Claire at the hospital, she saw a dark-haired woman with a baby in her arms getting out of a nondescript black sedan as the driver unloaded a stroller from the trunk. The woman placed the baby in the stroller, smiling at him affectionately and wiggling her fingers over his nose. As she pushed the stroller past Sarah, an object fell out of the netted storage area near the bottom.

Sarah bent down and picked up the toy; it was a tiny, white stuffed rabbit.

"Excuse me," she called out, catching the woman's attention. "I think you dropped this."

"Oh, thank you," the dark-haired woman said with a charming smile. She had an interesting accent that Sarah couldn't quite place. "My son would have been very upset if he'd lost his favorite toy."

She took the toy from Sarah. The small stuffed animal looked out of place in her finely manicured hand, especially next to the prominent diamond ring on her engagement finger. The baby in the stroller began to fuss, but his mother didn't seem bothered.

"He has his father's temperament sometimes," she told Sarah. "He doesn't like it when he doesn't get his way."

As the woman leaned over and made quiet shushing noises for the baby, Sarah caught sight of something glittering near the neckline of her dress. After a moment, she realized it was a pair of square, black cufflinks, strung onto a chain to become a necklace. It seemed like an odd choice in jewelry to her. The cufflinks seemed to catch the baby's attention as well, and he reached a tiny hand out to try to touch them as they dangled over him.

"I think he likes your necklace," Sarah noted.

The woman shook her head at the baby, tucking the chain back into her dress. "They won't fit you yet, love."

Then she gave Sarah another polite smile before continuing on her way.

As Sarah reached the corner, she glanced over her shoulder. She frowned as she saw the woman enter the front door of Orion, the security guards hurrying to hold the door open for her and the stroller. Personally, she would probably never bring a baby into that building, but she'd seen many family members of the employees there come and go as though they didn't comprehend what a dangerous, evil place it was. Or maybe they just didn't care.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

It wasn't until Sarah had actually arrived at the hospital that she realized she didn't have any knowledge of where to find Claire beyond what wing she worked in. She made her way to the ER, which luckily was crowded, full of doctors and patients for her to blend in with. Finally, after circling the area a few times, Sarah spotted the familiar woman standing next to a patient's bed, taking their pulse. She lingered awkwardly at the perimeter of the curtained-off bed area until Claire looked up and noticed her. She finished up with her patient and walked over to Sarah.

"Hi," Sarah greeted her as she fidgeted with her purse strap. "Um…sorry to just kind of drop in on you like this—"

"It's alright," Claire said tiredly, sounding as calm and unperturbed as she had the first time they met. "I got a heads up you'd becoming by. Come on."

Sarah followed Claire into an unoccupied examination room down the hallway. Luckily, the wound on her foot only needed a few stitches, and Claire finished the job up quickly and with minimal pain. She had immediately noted that the cut was a knife wound, disapproval heavy in her voice. Sarah could only shrug guiltily, remembering how Claire had cautioned her to be careful, specifically saying that she didn't want to see Sarah end up in her emergency room. And yet, here she was.

"How are your other injuries healing?"

"I think everything is pretty much back to normal," Sarah said, her hand unconsciously drifting to her throat. Her fingers brushed against the area where dark, finger-shaped bruises had so recently been. "My skin doesn't look like a bad watercolor painting anymore, at least."

"You look even more tired than the last time I saw you," the nurse noted, somehow sounding both sympathetic and reproving.

"Yeah," Sarah said, not even bothering to pretend she wasn't as exhausted as she looked. "I, um…I don't really sleep much these days, I guess. And when I do, it's not…I don't know. Restful."

Claire frowned at that. Then with a sigh, she strode over to a locked cabinet that sat in the corner of the room and inserted her key. She rummaged through the contents before emerging with a small pill bottle in her hand, similar to the bottle of antibiotics she had given Sarah.

"Technically, I'm not giving these to you. I'm not prescribing them to you, and I'm not recommending you take them," Claire said sternly. "But I _am_ telling you that…I've had my nights with bruised skin and no sleep, too. And these helped me to fall asleep and not have nightmares for a while, until I was able to do it on my own again."

Sarah gazed down at the pill bottle in Claire's hand, knowing she should probably hand it back. Maybe the nurse had enough restraint to use them the way they were intended—as a temporary crutch during difficult times—but Sarah wasn't so sure about herself. She scolded herself with the same advice she'd always wanted to give her father in similar situations. _Just turn them down now so that you aren't tempted later. It's that simple._

Instead, she slowly reached out and accepted the small bottle, then opened her purse and dropped it inside.

As she made her way through the hospital's main lobby, towards the front door, she didn't notice a familiar police officer catch sight of her and pull out his cell phone to make a call.

Sarah stepped out into the humid air, pausing as she glanced over at the subway stop But for some reason, the thought of going home made her stomach turn. So did the thought of being alone. She pulled out her phone, checking the time. It was still early. Almost without thinking, she found herself dialing a now familiar number.

"Hello?" Matt answered on the second ring.

"Hey," she said. "Are you still at work?"

"I was just about to leave. How did things go with Claire?"

"It went really well," Sarah said, leaning against the low brick wall that separated the parking lot from the sidewalk. "She's a million times faster at stitches than I am. I was only there for a few minutes."

"Good. Is everything alright at your place?"

"I don't know," Sarah admitted. "I didn't go home."

There was a pause on the other end of the phone.

"Where are you, then?"

"Still outside the hospital. I don't—I don't really want to be at my place right now," she said, hating how silly that sounded but pressing on anyway. "I thought I might go get something to eat at this sort of shitty diner down the street. Their food isn't great, but they're cheap, and no one I know goes there. I was wondering if maybe…you wanted to come."

Matt took a few moments to respond, and Sarah bit her lip. She didn't know why she called Matt instead of Lauren, or even her father. Maybe it was because he was the only person she felt like she could be around without worrying that she was putting them in danger. Matt's whole life was built on danger, whether she was in it or not.

"Yeah, I'll be there," he said finally. "What's the address?"

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

The hospital wasn't far from Matt's office, so Sarah didn't have to wait long on the bench outside the diner before she saw Matt walking up the sidewalk, clicking his cane in front of him. She wondered if he actually relied on the cane at all; constantly using his senses to figure out what was around him had to get tiring after a while, didn't it?

The waitress' nametag read 'Gracie', and she had dark red hair and a button nose. She was also very clearly interested in the handsome blind man seated in her section.

"Let me know if you guys need anything," she said enthusiastically after introducing herself by name and taking their drink orders. "I'll be back in just a few minutes to check on you."

Her gaze lingered on Matt as she spoke, and he gave her an easy, charming smile in return.

"Thanks, Gracie," Matt said, his tone far more amiable than Sarah had ever heard it. "We'll be sure to let you know if we have any questions."

Sarah raised her eyebrows at him as the waitress walked away. She was used to seeing him smirking, or the crooked smile he sometimes gave her. On rare occasions, she got a flash of his full smile if she said something that made him laugh—though usually that wasn't on purpose. But this smile was very different: pleasant and charming, but carefully constructed.

She shook her head, deciding she would never understand the many different personalities of Matt Murdock, and turned her attention to the menu.

"What are you getting?" she asked him.

"I don't know. I can't tell what's on the menu."

"Why not? Can't use your superpowers in public?" she muttered, scanning the list for something that wasn't fried.

"It's laminated," Matt said, holding the menu up. "I can't feel the ink."

Sarah paused her search and looked up at him. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, but she couldn't help letting a short laugh escape her lips at the sight of Matt brandishing the menu with an mildly annoyed look on his face. It seemed absurd that he could take out entire groups of armed men with no problem, but he couldn't read a menu in a cheap diner.

"What?" Matt asked, raising his eyebrows at her.

"Nothing," she said, trying to school her face into a sober expression. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I just hadn't thought of that. Matt Murdock's one true nemesis: lamination."

Matt sent her a glare from behind his dark glasses, though the corner of his mouth curved up almost imperceptibly. The sight only made her laugh more, covering her mouth to try and stifle the sound. It was the kind of laughter that only ever came to her from extreme tiredness, and she had always had difficulty controlling it.

Gracie the waitress appeared next to them with a bright smile, which wavered slightly as she looked from Sarah to Matt and the differences in their demeanors.

"I was going to see if you have any questions, but if you…need a minute?" she said uncertainly.

"She might need another minute to decide," Matt informed the waitress casually, nodding in Sarah's direction, before adopting a serious tone. "She's been busy laughing at me for not being able to read the menu."

The waitress gave Sarah a scandalized look, and Sarah stopped laughing abruptly.

"What? No, that's not what—" she protested, but the waitress had already turned her attention back to Matt with a sympathetic smile.

"I'll go see if we carry Braille menus. I'm so sorry about that."

She cast Sarah one more disappointed look before walking away, leaving Matt with a slight smirk playing across his face as she turned her back.

"That was rude," Sarah told him.

"I should say so. Making fun of a blind person in public."

Sarah glanced over at the counter, where she could see that the redhead was very obviously recapping what had just happened to some of her coworkers, shaking her head in disapproval. Turning her attention back to Matt, Sarah shot him a dirty look that she could only hope he picked up on.

"Our waitress thinks I'm the devil now," she whispered resentfully.

"Well, she has that one backwards, doesn't she?" he said with a wicked grin that looked much more at home on him than the broad, practiced smile he'd given the waitress earlier.

"I'm starting to regret being seen in public with you," she informed him.

Matt just laughed, and Sarah smiled back, feeling more normal than she had in days. This was almost—almost—something that ordinary people did: go to dinner, have awkward exchanges with the waitress. It felt like something that might have happened in her old life. She wasn't sure if her persistent headache was finally starting to fade, or if she was just getting better at ignoring it, but the tension in her neck felt a little looser than it had in a while.

Her need to hang onto that feeling of normalcy was probably why she carefully avoided steering the conversation towards anything regarding Orion or Ronan, and to her relief Matt didn't bring them up either. She held off on mentioning her conversation with Jason earlier that day; she wanted to wait until she had some answers, and right now all she had were more questions.

After a few minutes, Gracie the waitress reappeared.

"So, I checked with my manager and unfortunately it looks like we don't carry any menus in Braille," she told Matt apologetically. "But I'd be happy to go through it with you if you have an idea of what you want?"

She leaned over Matt's shoulder, letting her long hair brush against his chest as she discussed possible menu selections with him.

Sarah watched the flirtatious exchange in fascination. As the waitress walked away, glancing back over her shoulder at Matt, Sarah leaned back and tilted her head speculatively.

"Huh."

"What?"

"Nothing," she said innocently, but upon Matt's skeptical expression she relented, leaning forward over the table as she explained. "The first night I met Foggy, he told me that you were usually a bit hit with the ladies."

Now it was Matt's eyebrows that went up. "Did he?"

"Uh huh. And obviously I thought he was…you know…insane."

"Obviously."

"But it turns out you _do_ know how to be charming. It's very weird to see."

"I'll never understand how the two of you found the time to cover so many topics while trying to stop me from bleeding to death."

She shrugged, stirring the straw around in her Coke. "We're multitaskers. Plus, you were the only thing we had in common."

Their food arrived quickly, and in between regular check-ins from Gracie the waitress—who really was very sweet, if a bit overly-attentive—the conversation flowed shockingly well. Sarah hadn't really given much thought to inviting Matt to dinner, beyond her irrational trepidation of being alone and her desire to be out of her apartment. It hadn't really occurred to her that she might have fun talking to the vigilante about non-crime related subjects, but to her surprise that was what was happening.

"—but Greg is British, and when he gets flustered he gets, like, _really_ British. So when he's around Lauren's mom—who is _awful_ —he gets really nervous, and just starts speaking in these weird British idioms, which just makes Lauren's mom angrier because she thinks he's making fun of her using slang she doesn't get."

As Matt laughed, Sarah checked the time and realized they had been there for a while. She tried not to think about the fact that she would have to go home to her empty apartment soon and deadbolt herself in.

"I'll be right back," she told Matt, slipping out of the booth to go use the restroom.

As she was washing her hands, Sarah got a good look at herself in the mirror and winced. Maybe it was just the direct comparison between her and the beautiful waitress, but she felt as though she looked especially rough today. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her face was pale with exhaustion. But, she reminded herself, at least her skin was no longer covered in cuts and bruises.

She pushed the bathroom door open and turned the corner, then stopped abruptly.

Sitting in her place on the other side of the table from Matt was Ronan, his smug sneer and beady eyes instantly recognizable. The sight hit her hard, like a punch to the stomach.

She blinked a few times to make sure she was seeing things correctly. But there was no mistaking it. He was sitting right there, speaking with Matt. And judging from the look on the vigilante's face, he was well aware of who he was talking to.

As Sarah watched Ronan's lips move, his eyes flicked automatically in her direction, as though he had been checking the doorway for her to reenter. When his gaze locked with hers, a fervent grin lit up his face. Her stomach turned at how genuinely gleeful he seemed to see her.

"Sarah," Ronan greeted her lazily, as though he hadn't been obsessively stalking her for weeks. He only had to raise his voice slightly for it to carry the fifteen feet or so between them. "Long time no see."

Sarah slowly approached the table, her foot moving of their own accord.

"What do you want?" she heard herself ask as she came to a stop a few feet away. Up closer, she could see a nasty scar on his face from where she had gotten him with the stapler.

"I just wanted to say hello. I happened to see you sitting in here and thought I'd stop by and introduce myself to your friend," he said casually.

Sarah's eyes flicked to Matt and then back to Ronan, her heart pounding in her chest.

"Great. You've said hello, now leave." Sarah tried to sound firm, but her voice shook slightly.

"Why? We were having a good chat. I was telling him about how you and I used to work together, and how well we got along."

There was a sickening suggestive tone to his voice, and Sarah chewed her tongue angrily to stop herself from responding and giving him more fuel to flame whatever love-hate thing he seemed to have going on for her. Matt was oddly silent, and Sarah was struck with the heart-sinking realization that he couldn't do much of anything in this situation. She hadn't invited Daredevil to dinner, she had invited Matt Murdock, and as far as everyone in the diner knew, he was an ordinary blind man. There was little he could do without blowing his cover.

Ronan's beady eyes darted from Sarah to Matt, and he smirked.

"I know who _you_ are."

Sarah's stomach dropped in the few seconds before Ronan continued.

"You're that blind lawyer the police were talking about. One of the ones Sarah hired to chase the cops away. I was wondering how she could possibly afford to hire a lawyer, but…I think I can take a good guess at how she's paying for your services." Ronan paused, a mock thoughtful look on his face. "Aren't there two of you on the lawyer team, though? Do you just split who gets her which nights?"

From the way Matt's fingers twitched around his cane, Sarah could tell he was itching to place them around Ronan's throat. But instead, he just kept his face carefully arranged into a neutral expression that was somehow still surprisingly intimidating with the dark glasses.

"You need to leave now," he said, in a tone that would make many sane people back off. Of course, it seemed to have the opposite effect on Ronan.

"Ooh, you're a little bossy. Good. She likes authority figures." Ronan leaned in to stage whisper to Matt, "It's a daddy issue thing."

Matt opened his mouth to reply, but Ronan was already speaking to Sarah once more.

"You know, I've really missed that deer-in-the-headlights look of yours. Pictures just don't quite do justice to it."

Sarah glared at him, anger shooting through her at the reminder that he had been in her apartment and touched her things. " _Stay away_ from me, Ronan."

His taunting smile abruptly turned hard. "Don't be rude, Sarah."

Ronan suddenly slid out of the booth to stand up, and in a flash Matt did the same, angling himself so that he was just slightly in front of Sarah. His posture was misleadingly relaxed: one hand lightly holding his cane and the other casually slipped into the pocket of his pants. Sarah was willing to bet was she only person in the diner who could see the coiled tension below the surface of his skin. Ronan surely couldn't.

Sarah could see Ronan sizing Matt up, clearly weighing Matt's height and build against the fact that he was blind. She didn't like the predatory look in his eyes as he looked the lawyer up and down. Of course, he had no way of knowing that the man standing in front of him was the same one who had broken his arm and generally beaten the shit out of him in Orion months ago. If he had, Sarah was willing to bet that he wouldn't be wearing the gleeful sneer that currently graced his face.

To her intense relief, Ronan seemed to decide that a confrontation with Matt wasn't worth it. It made sense; Ronan only ever picked fights that he was one hundred percent sure he would win, meaning either the other person had to be much smaller, or Ronan had to be much more heavily armed. A lack of sight didn't appear to be enough of a handicap for the man to be interested.

"Down, boy. I was just getting up to leave. It was nice meeting you, though. I'm sure I'll run into you around somewhere," Ronan said, lazily backing away from the table.

Matt's smile at Ronan's words was almost feral.

"I'm sure you will."

Ronan's grin slipped just slightly, as though some part of him could sense the danger standing in front of him. He gave Sarah one last purposeful look up and down, and then he was out the door, disappearing into the crowd outside.

The diner suddenly felt hot and claustrophobic, as though the number people inside had multiplied by ten. She hadn't realized that actually seeing Ronan again—for the first time since he had attacked her—would affect her so badly, but it was fully hitting her now. The tight feeling building up in her chest wasn't as bad as what she'd felt in the police station, but it was rapidly approaching it.

Through the haze Sarah felt a hand on her arm, and she flinched at the contact. She turned her head slightly and saw that Matt had a dark, concerned look on his face.

"Let's get you outside."

"What?"

She was vaguely aware of Matt fishing some money out of his wallet and tossing it on the table before he took her by the crook of her arm and gently steered her towards the side door of the restaurant. No one seemed to bat an eye at the sight of a blind man leading her out of the diner—but he always did manage to make it look like he was the one being led.

They emerged not onto the crowded sidewalk but into a side alley separating the diner from the building next door.

Sarah looked down the alleyway at the sidewalk, distantly registering that Matt should be following Ronan and not standing next to her. "Y-you shouldn't stay here—you should go after Ronan—"

"Ronan went down into the subway across the street," Matt cut her off. "There's no way for me to follow him there without attracting a lot of attention. Besides, I'm not leaving you here alone."

She shook her head desperately, unable to accept the idea that Ronan had been so close and yet somehow managed to disappear again.

"No, we can't just—just let him go like that—"

"I said, I'm not leaving you," Matt repeated sharply.

The alley was nearly empty, save for a few waiters smoking cigarettes near the other end, but Sarah still felt like she was suffocating in a crowd somehow. She struggled to breathe in and out normally, determined not to let the panic in her chest wash over her fully like it had last time.

"I don't—I can't be here anymore," she whispered. Matt just nodded, seeming to understand what she meant.

"Come on," he said, and with a hand on the small of her back he guided her out of the alleyway and towards the sidewalk.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

They didn't speak on the way to Matt's apartment, remaining in silence as he unlocked the front door and held the it open for her to go inside. Matt nodded towards the couch and Sarah shakily took a seat, resting her head in her hands as Matt disappeared into the kitchen. She could hear the sound of the tap running before his footsteps came closer to her once again.

He pressed a glass of water into her hands before crouching down in front of her, a frown creasing his brow. She quickly drank half the glass in one go, only now realizing how dry her mouth was. When she brought the glass back down between her knees, her hands were shaking badly, causing the water to slosh around. Matt put his hands over hers, steadying her grip on the glass, and waited wordlessly as she tried to calm down.

Unlike back at the police station, this time Sarah wavered at the edge of a full blown panic attack but didn't quite go over. It slowly became easier to inhale fully, and once her heart realized she wasn't in immediate danger it gradually stopped racing.

"You with me?" Matt asked her calmly as he picked up on the changes in her pulse and breathing.

"Yeah," she said with a faint nod, her face heating up slightly as she realized how much she had just fallen apart. "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize."

She laughed harshly. "Why not? I'm an idiot and thought that I could actually go out and eat a—a meal in a diner for an hour like a normal person, and now look what happened."

"You have nothing to apologize for," Matt said bluntly, then his jaw ticked. "It was my fault that he was able to get that close to you. I should have been more focused on what was going on around us, but I was…" he faltered slightly, then shook his head with a shrug. "I just wasn't. So _I'm_ sorry. That won't happen again."

Sarah didn't blame Matt for not picking up on Ronan's presence, but she also couldn't force herself to fully believe that something like that wouldn't happen again. In fact, it began to feel like a foregone conclusion that Ronan would succeed in getting to her after all. Her stomach twisted violently at the thought.

"Can I use your bathroom?" she asked, pulling her hands out of his and setting the glass on the side table.

"Yeah," Matt said, standing up again and nodding to the door next to his bedroom. "It's over there."

Sarah closed the bathroom door behind her and leaned over the sink, taking a deep breath. She clamped her eyes shut, but was only met with a barrage of unwanted images:

Ronan grabbing her by the hair and dragging her across the desk. Being slammed into the filing cabinet and the heavy blow of his hand against her face—once, twice, three times. Ronan's tongue in her mouth and the scent of stale cigarettes as he pinned her with his whole body, his hands tearing at her shirt, nails digging into her skin. His fingers closing around her throat. Blood pouring from his nose and the gash on his cheek and him staring at her with more hatred than she had ever seen someone direct her way.

She snapped her eyes open once more, catching sight of her pale face in the mirror. Her knuckles were visibly white as she gripped the edge of the counter.

"This is dumb," she whispered fiercely to her reflection. "Stop being a child."

Feeling no less stupid for talking to herself in the mirror, she shook her head ruefully and opened the bathroom door to step back out into the living room.

Matt was in the kitchen, pouring another glass of water for himself. Something about the way he carefully kept his attention on the running water instead of her made her think he'd probably heard her heartbeat skyrocket once again in the other room.

Sarah heard her phone chirp inside her purse, alerting her to an unread text message. Her stomach dropped as she slowly leaned down reached into the bag to pull it out. She already knew who it would be from.

_Interesting choice of guard dog,_ the text read. _Couldn't find anyone at Orion who still thought sleeping with you was worth the trouble? It's okay. The game is more fun with a little competition._

Sarah's skin crawled as she read the text. It wasn't even particularly graphic—not compared to some of the inappropriate comments he had made to her since she began working for him—but it confirmed that his obsession was now at least partially fixated on Matt. In Ronan's twisted mind, anyone he saw her with had to be after the same thing he was; there was no way anyone would be on her side unless they were getting exactly what Ronan wanted in return.

"What's he saying?" Matt's voice came from beside her. She hadn't even heard him approach over the pounding of blood in her ears.

She glanced up at him, slightly reluctant to answer. "He's talking about you."

Matt raised his eyebrows. "Yeah? What about me?"

"Just the same thing he says about everyone he sees me with," she said quietly with a shrug. "Since I'm not sleeping with him, he imagines that I'm sleeping with everyone else. I think…I think seeing me with you really made him angry."

Sarah didn't mean to let the nervousness slip in her voice, but it did, causing her voice to break a little on the last word. She hated that someone as clearly unhinged as Ronan could affect her like that; she didn't want to think of her actions in terms of what would set off his obsession even more.

Matt's expression was a strange mixture of concern and barely contained anger; more importantly, it didn't hold any of the pity she so dreaded seeing there. All the same, she was still embarrassed by how strongly she had reacted to her encounter in the diner.

"I'm sorry. _Shit_. This is so stupid. I didn't—I didn't think seeing him would affect me that badly. He didn't even touch me." Sarah slid her hands over her face tiredly as she breathed in deep, then muttered, "I wasn't always this pathetic."

For once, the barrier of her hands actually did muffle her voice so much that Matt couldn't understand her.

"What?"

She moved her hands away from her face, running them through her hair. "I said, I wasn't always this pathetic."

A flash of anger crossed Matt's face at her words, though she wasn't if it was directed at her or Ronan.

"You aren't pathetic. You were assaulted. I saw how badly you were hurt that night. He beat the shit out of you—he tried to _rape you_ , Sarah." Matt's words hit her hard, and she physically flinched at hearing him so candidly phrase it in exactly the way she had been avoiding since it happened. He softened is tone a little at her reaction. "I know you don't like to talk about it. But pretending like it wasn't a big deal doesn't make it go away."

"I'm not pretending, I just—I can't make _everything_ a big deal," she said desperately. "Th-there has to be some sort of hierarchy for all of these—these stupid, shitty things going on. I can't deal with Jason and whatever the hell he wants from me, a-and the police not doing their job, and my _dad_ —" her voice waver dangerously, and she took a deep breath to steady it. "I can't waste time letting Ronan affect me like this when there are so many other things that could go so wrong so fast if I lose my focus."

As the words came out of her mouth, she started to realize how true they were. She was spending all of her time trying to defuse too many bombs at once, and one of them was bound to go off soon.

"Listen to me," Matt said, his voice quiet but firm. "I know there's a lot happening all at once. But if there's anything all of these people have in common it's that they underestimate you. You're the one who's going to come out on top of all this. I'll make sure of it. I promise. Okay?"

"Yeah," Sarah said, but she couldn't quite muster the energy to sound convinced.

Matt sighed at her doubtful tone, cocking his head in contemplation for a second. Then he his hand up between the two of them with his pinky extended. She looked down at it in surprise, and he raised an expectant eyebrow.

"Come on. This is _your_ thing," he said calmly when she just stared at him, the corners of his mouth quirking up slightly. "I know you take these seriously."

Sarah laughed shakily and linked her pinky finger with his own. Inexplicably, that was what finally pushed her over the edge. Her throat closed up, and to her alarm she realized that her determined effort to get through the ordeal without crying was quickly crumbling. She covered her mouth with her free hand and squeezed her eyes closed, trying and failing to tamp it back down.

When Matt heard her breathing hitch, he tugged her forward and wrapped his arms around her tightly. Sarah slipped her arms around his waist, curling her fingers into the fabric of his shirt as she buried her face against his chest, desperately relieved to have anything to anchor her.

Sarah hadn't realized how long it had been since someone had really, properly hugged her—not the awkwardly loose hugs Lauren tried to give her from around her giant stomach, or the distant hugs she got from her father, who was already starting to recognize her less and less even as she hung onto him. But this was different: a source of comfort she hadn't felt in a long time, coming from one of the last people she would have expected.

"You're alright. You're alright. I'll keep you safe, I swear."

He repeated the promise over and over into her ear as she sobbed into the front of his shirt.

Sarah wasn't sure how long they remained that way—it felt like a long time but she knew it probably wasn't. But when she finally pulled away she felt significantly less hopeless than she had before. The wild crushing feeling that had been weighing down her chest had gradually lifted, leaving her too tired to even be self-conscious over her breakdown.

"I, um…I should probably go home soon," she said. The idea of being in her apartment still wasn't an appealing one, but the idea of sleep was. She was so focused on the thought of actually getting some sleep that she missed the way Matt frowned at her words.

"Sarah, listen—" he began, but whatever he was going to say was cut off by the sound of his phone vibrating on the counter, accompanied by a computerized female voice.

_"Foggy. Foggy. Foggy."_

Matt winced apologetically. "I have to take that. Foggy's been trying to find this paperwork that we badly need for a trial, and our deadline to file is in just a couple of hours…"

"Yeah, of—of course," Sarah said, gesturing towards the ringing phone. "Go deal with that. It's important."

"I'll be just a few minutes," he told her, grabbing the phone off the counter and heading towards his bedroom. "You and I have more to talk about."

Sarah nodded numbly as he disappeared into the bedroom. Then she made her way back over to the couch, dropping down onto the corner cushion and curling her feet underneath her. She leaned her elbow on the arm rest and propped her head up with her hand.

The exhaustion washed over her suddenly, taking her a bit by surprise. She closed her eyes, just to rest them for a minute while Matt was on the phone. The quiet murmur of his voice in the other room was last thing she was aware of, the words themselves becoming background noise before she slipped into a troubled sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Emotional-Breakdown-Hug-The-Hot-Vigilante-Sarah is fun to write, but I think I'm ready for Learning-To-Fight-Like-A-Badass-Sarah soon, how about you guys?


	20. Preparing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, friends! Tomorrow is the big day! I'm sure you guys all saw the third and final trailer they just released, plus the Daredevil/Punisher Featurette. A lot of you have been asking if I'll be incorporating any elements of Season 2 into this story. I don't have any current plans to do so, but we'll see once I watch it. My fingers are triple crossed that the entire season isn't taken up by all of the mystic ninja stuff they keep putting in the trailers, because I really love how Daredevil deals with the more realistic kind of crime that most major cities face, as opposed to vast armies with magical powers. There is very little chance any of that will be making appearance in this story. The characters of Elektra and the Punisher, though, maybe.
> 
> This chapter is a bit shorter than the last few, and noticeably more light-hearted. Partially because I was on a time-crunch to get this last chapter out before taking a brief break from the story (only a few weeks) and partially because the last few chapters have been very heavy, and I wanted to leave you guys on a lighter note before Season 2 begins and hits us all with a bunch of actual canon angst. So this chapter is mostly various short scenes of different characters chatting with each other, which to be honest is kind of my favorite thing to write. We'll get back to the plot-heavy stuff next time!

### Chapter Twenty: Preparing

The first thing Sarah's mind registered as she woke up was that her sheets felt significantly softer than usual.

Not thinking much of it, she lazily stretched out under the covers with a low whine, keeping her eyes closed as she wondered how much more time she had before her phone's alarm clock went off. She ran a hand through her tangled hair before finally opening her eyes—where she was met with the jarring sight of an unfamiliar ceiling.

Sarah sat up with a jolt before her still half-asleep mind caught up with where she was. She squinted at the nightstand, where she could see a Bible and a small white pyramid that, according to its label, was a talking alarm clock. Between that and the sheets, there was little question as to whose bedroom she was in. She groaned and leaned her head against her knees as she realized that—on top of having an embarrassing breakdown—she must have fallen asleep at Matt's place last night. Actually, she corrected herself, she had fallen asleep on Matt's _couch_. So how was it that she had woken up in his bed?

She checked the time on her cell phone, which had been placed on the nightstand next to her; it was still early, which gave her plenty of time to go home for a shower and change of clothes before work. She slipped out from between the covers, automatically smoothing them down again behind her before quietly padding over to the bedroom door and peering out into the living room.

Her eyes immediately landed on a familiar vigilante stretched out on the couch. He had a blanket thrown over him and his arm was curled under the pillow he was using. Sarah shook her head ruefully at the sight; she could never quite call when he would do something as oddly old-fashioned as ensuring he took the couch instead of her.

She began to quietly make her way over to where her shoes were sitting near the arm chair, but her attempts at stealth were interrupted by the loud, harsh ringtone of her morning alarm. It went off for a few long seconds before she managed to fumble with the lock screen and turn the alarm off.

"Your ringtone is horrible," came a low, scratchy voice from the direction of the couch.

Sarah jumped, glancing over at Matt guiltily. He was still stretched out on his back, but his unfocused eyes were open and directed up at the ceiling.

"I sleep right through all of the quieter ones," she explained, her voice barely above a whisper. "Sorry I woke you up."

"It's alright. I had to get up soon anyway," he said, sounding deeply unenthusiastic about the prospect.

"You don't sound very happy about it."

"M'not much of a morning person," he mumbled, sitting up with a low groan. Sarah cracked a small smile at the sight of his hair sticking up in odd directions.

"That's weird. It's not like you stay out every night until the crack of dawn or anything," she pointed out lightly as she slipped her shoes on.

Matt's chuckle was still gravelly from sleep. "No arguments here."

She couldn't help but think that sleeping on the couch surely couldn't have helped make the early morning wake-up more bearable. "I didn't…mean to fall asleep here last night. I was just going to close my eyes for a minute while you were on the phone with Foggy. You could have woken me up."

"Why would I do that?" Matt asked with a yawn.

Sarah caught sight her bag sitting under the side table next to the couch, and skirted around the coffee table to grab it. As she leaned down to pick up the bag, Matt shifted a little to sit up straighter, though his legs remained stretched out across the couch. The blanket slipped away from his upper body, and a barely perceptible wince crossed his face as he reached for the sweatshirt that was slung over the top of the couch. As he zipped the sweatshirt up, a dark, painful looking bruise covering the skin of his torso caught Sarah's eye. It looked to be brand new from the vivid coloring, and it was large, spreading across his sternum and out of view behind his partially-zipped sweatshirt.

"Did you go out last night?" she asked, caught off guard by the sight.

"For a bit. I was going to stay in, but it was still early, and there was a weapons shipment coming in that I wanted to intercept. Gun runners aren't, ah…the most agreeable bunch."

"Who would have guessed," Sarah muttered as she lowered herself onto the edge of the couch next to him and automatically reached out to brush the edge of his sweatshirt aside to get a better look. Up close she could see that the area was raised and swollen.

"Christ, Matt," she said softly.

Matt was very still as she traced the edge of the massive bruise in concern, almost as though he were caught off guard by the contact. Sarah was careful to keep her fingers from brushing against the actual inflamed skin, which she assumed was probably painful to the touch. After a few moments, he seemed to snap out of the stillness. He reached up and loosely caught her hand, curling his fingers around hers and gently guiding her hand away from the bruised area and back down to the couch.

"It's fine," he reassured her softly with an unconcerned half-shrug. "It's healing."

Sarah frowned at the practiced nonchalance in his voice; it reminded her of the not-quite-genuine smile he'd given the waitress the night before.

"Has anyone ever told you that your Daredevil outfit could stand to be a little…sturdier?"

The question elicited a rueful chuckle from Matt. "A few people, actually. I'm working on it. The person I had hoped to get an upgrade from went underground for a bit until everything with Fisk is officially done, but…I've heard rumors that he might be coming back to town soon."

As she glanced up from the bruise on his chest to look at his face, she caught sight of another, smaller bruise near the top of his forehead, as dark as the other one but just barely visible beneath his hairline.

"Did you take a hit to the head, too?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said. Sarah opened her mouth, but before she could say anything he raised his eyebrows in warning. "I swear if you ask me about the continents, I'm going to toss you off the roof."

She let out a surprised laugh at the threat, which between the grouchy tone and his disheveled appearance was far from intimidating.

" _Really_ not a morning person," she noted, eliciting another quiet chuckle from the vigilante. "I'll remember that for future reference. I was just going to ask if your brain is still all in one piece."

"As much as it's ever been," he said before slowly sitting up fully and putting his feet on the ground, uncurling his fingers from where they had still been hooked with hers. "I'll be better after coffee. You have time for me to make you some?"

Sarah glanced down at the time on her phone as Matt stood up; it was still early. "Coffee would be very helpful."

She let her gaze wander around the apartment while Matt messed with the coffee maker, trying to keep her thoughts from drifting to the previous night's events too often. After a few minutes, he returned to the living room with two mugs in his hands, offering one to her.

"Thanks," she murmured as she accepted the drink.

"I wanted to talk to you about something," Matt said as he lowered himself down to sit on the couch next to her.

"Right," Sarah said as she recalled the last of their conversation the night before. He had said they had more to talk about, but then she'd fallen asleep. "What's up?"

Matt was silent for a moment, gathering his thoughts before he began speaking, which Sarah was slowly beginning to suspect was some sort of ingrained lawyer habit, as it almost always proceeded an attempt to convince her of something.

"You mentioned on the phone last night that you didn't want to go home."

That was true. But now, in the daylight, with the sounds of the city waking up around them, that fear seemed irrational and childish.

"Oh, yeah," she said, then shook her head as she tried to explain without sounding like a head-case. "I was just being...I don't know. I mean, I have like, a million locks on my door, and it's not like either of those guys actually managed to get through them. Sometimes I just get weird about being alone, I guess."

The silence that followed her ramble made her instantly self-conscious, though she couldn't tell from Matt's expression if he was listening to her heartbeat or if he was simply considering what she had said.

"If you don't want to be alone…you know that you can stay here. With me," he said, his tone hesitant but surprisingly genuine. "I don't think it will be long before we manage to track Ronan down, but until that happens…I can't say that I like the idea of you being alone in your apartment any more than you do."

Sarah's mouth fell open slightly before she abruptly shut it. An offer to come stay with him had been the last thing she had been expecting. And to be honest, it was a fairly tempting offer. As explosive and unpredictable as Matt could be, there was no doubt in her mind that he was completely on her side now, temper problems and all. And while barely-contained violence wasn't a trait she had particularly sought out in her friends in the past, it was a strangely comforting one now that she found herself constantly encountering violent people who were decidedly not on her side. But at the same time, she couldn't let Ronan be the one to dictate whether or not she could stay in her own home. And Matt had an entire city that needed looking after; she didn't want to distract him from that.

"Matt…" she began, and from the way his expression closed off slightly she could see that he knew what her answer was going to be. "I don't…I don't think I can do that."

"I...can't blame you if you don't feel comfortable staying with me," he said. "But I did promise you that I would keep you safe. And you'd definitely be safer staying here than at your place."

"It has nothing to do with whether or not I feel comfortable, Matt. I know your apartment is safer than mine is right now."

"Then stay here," he said simply. "Where I can protect you."

She shook her head, looking down at the coffee in her hand. "And what about the rest of the time? When I'm coming and going from work, or stopping at the grocery store? Or going to visit my dad, or—or hanging out with Lauren? Or anything else that involves being in public? I can't let Ronan set the terms for where I go or what I do, Matt. And…running away from my own apartment is the first step towards doing that."

Sarah had gotten much better at reading Matt's face, but for the life of her she could figure out what he was thinking as he sat facing her with his brow furrowed, as though he were contemplating something.

"No response," she pointed out, brushing her hair out of her face tiredly. "You think I'm being dumb."

"That's not the word I was thinking of," he said simply, offering no further explanation for his frustratingly vague statement, as usual.

"You...don't look thrilled, though."

Matt was clearly struggling to resist taking his usual route of bossing her around, which she appreciated, though she wasn't sure how long it would last. "I'm not. But...at the end of the day, it's your choice, not mine. The offer stays on the table, though. If you change your mind."

She gave him a small smile. "Thanks, Matt."

He just nodded, still looking dissatisfied with her decision. It occurred to Sarah that now might be a good time to bring up a question she had been meaning to ask him since last night.

"If you're that worried about me being safe, I was thinking that maybe...soon you could start showing me some of the self-defense you were talking about? Like…this weekend soon, maybe?"

"I was thinking the same thing. You sure you don't want to wait until your foot heals?"

Sarah shrugged. "For all I know, by the time my foot heals, there will be something else. I'd like to go ahead and start learning, if only so I…I can feel like I'm actually doing something. Not just having panic attacks and avoiding phone calls."

"This weekend, then," he agreed.

"Not in the morning, though," she suggested with a grin. "Maybe some time of day when you're less grouchy."

Matt gave her a dirty look as he plucked the empty coffee mug from her hands and stood up. "Don't you have a job to get to?"

Sarah checked the time on her phone again. "Ooh, actually, yes. It's later than I thought."

She grabbed her purse and slung it over her shoulder, then lingered for a moment at the divider between Matt's front hall and his living room. Matt was in the kitchen, setting the dirty dishes in his sink. He looked up when she spoke again.

"Hey, um..." Sarah suddenly had a number of things she wanted to say to him. She wanted to make sure he knew that he appreciated his offer, and that she was sorry that he gave up his bed for her last night even though he was injured. And she wanted to tell him just how much he had helped her the night before, and how much the idea of learning to defend herself was going to help her get through the rest of the week. But it was just too many things to express, and she couldn't find the right words. "Nevermind. I'll see you later, okay?"

Matt frowned at her strange behavior, but didn't address it. "Yeah. Be careful."

As Sarah hurried down the stairwell and out of the building, she didn't notice a familiar shaggy-haired blond man in a business suit a few feet down the sidewalk, blending in with the rest of the morning commuters on his way to surprise his law partner with bagels. But if the almost comical look of surprise and exasperation on his face was any indication, he had most definitely noticed her.

**

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

**

A few minutes later, Matt picked up on the sound of a familiar set of footsteps ascending the stairwell towards his apartment, and he internally groaned at Foggy's horrible sense of timing. Matt's apartment was on Foggy's way to work, and he occasionally dropped by before work to bring breakfast. But on this particular day, Matt wished hadn't. There was so little time between Sarah leaving and Foggy arriving that there was no way they didn't cross paths as she left his apartment building, clearly wearing clothes from the day before.

Sure enough, when Matt opened the door he was immediately greeted by a wave of palpable exasperation from his friend.

"Hi, Foggy," Matt casually greeted the man as he went ahead and entered the apartment. "What are you doing here so early?"

"I had a coupon for the bagel place," he said, tossing the bag on the kitchen counter before turning to face his friend. "You know, when I said you needed to get laid, sleeping with Sarah was so not what I had in mind."

Matt let out a groan at his friend's deadpan tone. "Foggy, I'm not—"

"Nope, let me get this out, because I totally saw this one coming," Foggy insisted.

"You…did?" Matt said doubtfully, holding off on correcting him until Foggy elaborated on what that meant.

"You bet your black-pajama-clad ass I did," he said. Matt was unfortunately familiar with the mixture of amusement and frustration that colored his friend's voice; it was a tone that he'd heard many times after getting involved with the wrong girl. "You always try to keep your hook ups under the radar, but this time there were definite signs. The two of you cozying up in the police station when she got arrested, for example."

Matt raised an eyebrow in disbelief. "What, when she was having a _panic attack_? What was I supposed to do, let her hyperventilate right in the interrogation room?"

"Of course not. I'm just saying, Mr. Radson was freaking out last week when he got arrested for breaking and entering, and I didn't see you scooting your chair all close to him and wrapping him up in your jacket," Foggy pointed out, reaching into the bag and fishing out a bagel.

"Mr. Radson is a six-foot-five construction worker, Foggy; I don't think my jacket would fit around him."

"Irrelevant. Exhibit number two—"

"—are we in court right now?—"

"— _exhibit number two_ : that day I went to visit her after she got hurt and she answered the door wearing your Columbia sweatshirt."

"I—she what?" Matt said, faltering for a second before shaking his head and continuing. "Borrowing a sweatshirt because your clothing is covered in blood is not a sign of romance, Foggy. In fact, I think it might be the opposite."

"Yeah, but snuggling up in it after the fact? Questionable. Number three—"

Foggy was coming close to making just a bit too much sense, and Matt finally decided that it was time to cut him off.

"Nothing happened, Foggy," he said firmly. "She fell asleep here, and I slept on the couch."

There was a short silence during which he could tell Foggy was eying him suspiciously, trying to ascertain if he was lying.

"You're sure?"

"Pretty positive," Matt said dryly. "I'm blind, but I think I would have noticed that."

"Oh. Well…that's probably good," Foggy said, sounding relieved. "Because I really like Sarah, but that would be...kind of messed up, to be honest. I mean, good on you two for moving past how you used to be, but still. The only person you could date who would make your life more complicated than her would maybe be Wilson Fisk himself."

Matt was more than aware that, given their history and the precarious power balance between the two of them, anything beyond friendship with Sarah was out of the question—so he wasn't sure why hearing it coming from Foggy was strangely painful.

"Well, you have nothing to worry about," Matt said, keeping his expression carefully neutral as he leaned around the other man to grab a bagel from the bag. "Sarah is just a friend. She just stayed here last night because she was afraid. And she didn't want to be alone."

Foggy faltered slightly, picking up on the seriousness that had crept into his friend's tone. Matt had told him only in very vague terms what was going on with Ronan. Sarah could sometimes be painfully tight-lipped about her personal life, and as a private person himself, Matt assumed that she wouldn't want him sharing every detail of the Ronan ordeal with Foggy. She barely seemed comfortable with the idea of _him_ knowing. But he'd told Foggy enough that he understood the gravity of the situation, and he could hear concern replace the teasing in Foggy's voice when he next spoke.

"What happened?"

"We ran into Ronan," Matt said darkly. "It didn't go great."

"You didn't pulverize that guy?"

"Unfortunately, no. I was…dressed down," he said carefully, making a split-second decision to not mention the fact that they had been out to dinner in a non-spying capacity. Foggy didn't seem to notice. "I'll be more prepared next time he shows up."

"And what if…you're not around next time he pops up?"

Matt worked his jaw unhappily. "I might not be. That's why I'm going to start teaching her a few techniques so that she can defend herself better."

"Really?" Foggy asked. "I'm kind of surprised she would go for that. I always got kind of a…passive vibe from her."

"She's pretty adept at hitting people with household objects, so…I'm just hoping to channel that into something a little more structured." Matt set his mostly uneaten bagel down—whoever had baked it had been wearing a lot of strong smelling lotion, and the taste was still stuck to the bread. It had coated his mouth after the first couple of bites. "So, did you come here solely with the purpose of eating bagels and interrogating me about Sarah?"

"Sadly, no. I actually came to talk about money," Foggy said. "We really need to go over some of our client's bills when we get to the office and figure out which ones we can actually, you know…ask for some payment soon. As much as I like the idea of us being the go-to-do-gooder lawyers of Hell's Kitchen…our finances are not looking great. Maybe we shouldn't be so eager to embrace the whole 'pay-us-when-you-can' reputation."

Matt sighed deeply. "Yeah, I've…I've been thinking about that, too. That one kind of got away from us, didn't it? We'll look through the cases and figure it out."

"Good plan. Now go get dressed, you look like a bum. Did you not get your beauty sleep last night?"

Foggy loitered around the living room while Matt got dressed for work, then he grabbed the bag of bagels and followed the other lawyer out the front door.

"So…training sessions, huh?" Foggy said as they came to the bottom of the stairwell.

"Basic self-defense lessons," Matt protested.

"I don't know…kind of sounds like an excuse to get all sweaty and handsy, in my opinion." Clearly he hadn't been entirely successful in convincing Foggy that there was nothing between him and Sarah.

"You know, I'm not the shameless deviant you try to paint me as, Foggy."

"I'm just saying, it seems suspicious. I mean, you've never offered to train me."

"I'd gladly show you how to take a punch right now," Matt said lightly as they stepped out onto the sidewalk.

"You couldn't handle these fisticuffs of fury, Murdock."

"I believe it," Matt said with a laugh before reaching his hand out to take the crook of Foggy's arm, which was already extended, as always.

**

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

**

Later that day, a shadow fell over Sarah's desk, and she looked up to see Jason looking down at her thoughtfully.

"Have I ever told you that I'm a bit of onomastician?" he said.

Sarah stared at him. "Um…I'm sorry, you're a what?"

"An onomastician," Jason repeated, enunciating the syllables more clearly. "One who studies the origins of names."

"Oh. No, I don't—I don't think you ever mentioned that," she said uncertainly. The topic was a bit left-field even for Jason, who seemed to be in a notably good mood today.

"It's a fascinating subject. Do you know the history behind your own name, Sarah?" he asked, and when she silently shook her head he continued. "It means 'Princess.' Isn't that interesting? But if you look back a little bit further, it originally came from the Biblical name 'Sarai', which meant 'quarrelsome'. Supposedly, God changed it once she and her husband were given a new purpose in life."

"I…didn't know that," Sarah said slowly, not sure what he wanted her to get out of this particular bit of trivia.

"Quarrelsome has inherently negative connotations, wouldn't you say? So to be given the opportunity to transcend from 'disagreeable' to 'royalty' is a pretty big step up. That's an amazing transformation."

_And in this scenario, God is…?_ Sarah wondered, completely lost on the point of his lecture. She didn't have the opportunity to ask for clarification, however, as they were interrupted by his phone loudly buzzing. Jason quickly read whatever text had just come through and sighed dramatically.

"Never off the clock, huh?" he asked her amiably. Sometimes she wondered if he just stocked up on phrases he had heard on television, because there was such a strange and jarring difference between his canned responses to certain situations and his unsettling intensity over seemingly meaningless trivia.

"Right, of course," she said, trying to sound enthusiastic, though she estimated that she was failing miserably.

"Listen, I haven't forgotten that I promised you we would finish that conversation we were having yesterday. Monday, we're going out to lunch on the company's tab, alright? There's someone I want you to meet who might join us if they're free."

If Sarah had been thrown by the name conversation, she was twice as confused by this new invitation. But she just smiled blandly at Jason, wondering if her own fake expression looked anything like the fixed grin he always wore on his face.

"Sounds…great. Thanks, Jason."

As Jason disappeared into the stairwell, Sarah immediately let the false smile fall from her face. Whoever Jason wanted her to meet at lunch, she was nearly positive they weren't going to be anyone who would make her life any easier.

**

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

**

"We've been here for half an hour, and so far we've gotten twice as many toys as we have supplies for your baby shower."

It was Saturday morning, and Sarah and Lauren were wandering around the aisles of a large Babies R' Us in Union Square. They had come with the intention of picking out decorations and paper supplies for the shower, but Lauren had quickly gotten derailed looking at stuffed animals and teething rings.

"Yeah, but this little octopus makes different sounds for each tentacle," Lauren said, pressing various parts of the small toy to make it light up and play music.

"Fine, we'll get the octopus because it's reasonably adorable," Sarah conceded. "And then we need to find…" she glanced down at the list in her hand. "Paper plates, napkins, streamers…basically everything on the list, actually."

"We'll get to it, don't worry."

"Aren't I supposed to be the one buying this stuff, anyway? I think planning the shower usually entails paying for the decorations and whatnot."

"Normally, but I have expensive tastes, Sarah," Lauren said as she tossed the tiny octopus in the cart. "I want the fanciest paper plates that Babies R' Us offers, and it wouldn't be fair for me to expect you to pay for that. Besides, you did all the planning. This is the easy part."

Sarah had a sneaking suspicion it had less to do with 'expensive tastes' and more to do with her recent exposure to Sarah's truly dire financial status. As much as it rubbed her the wrong way to let Lauren pay for part of her own baby shower—Sarah had insisted on still paying for the food and drinks, and of course finding a location—she had to admit that it would have been very difficult to find room in her budget for a party right now.

They strolled down the aisle in silence for a while, looking through baby items to add to the already expansive collection Lauren had stocked away for her unborn daughter.

"I think you should buy a gun," Lauren said, seemingly out of nowhere.

Sarah threw her a strange look. "Um…I don't think they sell those here."

"Not right now. I mean in general. Given some of the things going on that we talked about earlier," Lauren said meaningfully. "Maybe you should have a gun in the house, considering the James Bond twist your life has taken lately."

The topic they had discussed earlier had, of course, been Ronan. Sarah had filled Lauren in on the two men that came to her apartment, and while she couldn't exactly tell Lauren the specifics of her run-in with Ronan, she had given her a heads up that he had surprised her in public once, and that it was possible he might do it again. It was part of the reason they had agreed to meet at this particular store, which was outside of Ronan's usual lurking perimeter. And Sarah had been extra careful to take an extremely convoluted way getting there, just in case.

"I'm not buying a gun, Lauren." Sarah shook her head, wondering if her friend had officially lost it.

"Why not? You can keep it under your bed, and then next time someone crazy shows up at your door, you can—you know—greet 'em with an ole 747," Lauren said, making finger guns and aiming them at a nearby mobile that was dangling tiny pastel ducklings.

"A 747 is an airplane."

"Oh. Well, to be fair, being greeted with an airplane would also be intimidating. Maybe more so than a gun."

"That's true. If a 747 goes on sale and you can manage to fit one in my apartment, I'll take it. But I'm not buying a gun."

Lauren exhaled dramatically in exasperation. "So, what, you're just relying on luck and staplers to stay alive?"

"No," Sarah protested, though she had to admit Lauren wasn't actually that far off from the truth. "First of all, it's not like there's a crazy army of people trying to hurt me or anything. There's one guy, and he's not very good at it."

"You literally told me that he has the cops working for him, Sarah. Don't try to downplay this," Lauren said threateningly, emphasizing her words by gesturing with the large stuffed giraffe she had picked up to inspect. Sarah reached out and plucked it from her hand before she could knock anything over.

"I said he has a couple of cops working with him, not the entire force," Sarah argued, then looked down at the giraffe in her hand. "This is cute," she noted, throwing it into the cart. "And anyway, I'm—I'm working on the whole defense thing, kind of."

"How? Are you taking a class? I tried about a million times to get you to take a kickboxing class with me, and you always said no."

"You only wanted to take that class because you thought it would get you into bed with the instructor," Sarah shot back.

"A plan that totally worked, I might add," Lauren said, holding her hand up for a high five, which Sarah begrudgingly had to return—the kickboxing instructor had been insanely hot. "So, are you taking a class? Are _you_ trying to sleep with your instructor?" she asked excitedly.

"No," Sarah said quickly, not wanting to put that idea into Lauren's head. "No, no. Definitely not. My plan is more along the lines of just trying not to get my head knocked off. So, no."

Lauren raised her eyebrows at Sarah's answer.

"That's a lot of 'no's. Who's teaching y—" her words cut off abruptly as she let her mouth fall open. " _Daredevil_?" Lauren exclaimed, a bit too loudly for Sarah's liking.

Sarah immediately elbowed her friend in the arm, glancing around the immediate area before sending her a dirty look. "Can you keep your voice down?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," Lauren said, looking around the empty aisle. The store had only been open for about an hour, and there were very few people there yet. "Who do you think is listening? The baby?"

"She could be. She has ears by now, right?"

"She's due in like two weeks, Sarah. I hope she has ears. And don't change the subject," Lauren said, before lowering her voice to just above a whisper. "Are you seriously telling me that the _Devil of Hell's Kitchen_ is teaching you some of his tricks?"

"I'm not learning his tricks," Sarah protested. "He's not a magician. He's just showing me some basic self-defense. Like, punching bags and stuff, I don't know."

"That is crazy. Who even are you?" Lauren asked in wonder. "I remember when you wouldn't even go zip lining with me because you thought it sounded too scary, and now you're going to go all _Million Dollar Baby_ with someone who's pretty widely considered to be one of the most dangerous people in Hell's Kitchen."

"He's not…I mean, he is. Dangerous." Sarah sighed and tried to figure out her wording. "But not to me."

_Anymore_ , she added mentally.

"Well, apparently, if he's dropping down on rooftops saving you from psychos. You know, if I hadn't seen him in your apartment with my own eyes, I would absolutely not believe any of this."

"Good. That's a good thing. Let's hope everyone else thinks it's unbelievable too," Sarah said. "Anyway. I'm not totally sold on the idea that I'll actually be able to _do_ any of the stuff he wants to show me, but...I figure it's worth a try."

"Well, maybe you'll have fun with it."

"Fun?"

"Yeah, fun," Lauren repeated. "You might remember the concept. Is that a thing you guys ever do in the middle of all this high-intensity spying? Have fun?"

Sarah tilted her head as she thought about it. She genuinely liked spending time with Matt—at least, when there wasn't a ton of blood involved—and he made her laugh pretty often, but she wasn't sure fun was the right word. Fun was reserved for things like riding roller coasters or swimming in the ocean; not for whatever strange feeling of peace she sometimes found with the vigilante. The closest they had come to fun would probably have been that night at the diner, and even that had ended in a decidedly _not_ fun way.

"I…wouldn't describe him as _fun_ , I don't think," Sarah said slowly. "He's more kind of...broody? Like if a Radiohead song became a person."

"Well," Lauren said in wheedling tone that Sarah recognized well, and which immediately made her suspicious. "If you think maybe you _could_ use some fun back in your life—and, let's be honest, you definitely could—Greg has been talking about this guy he works with who just broke up with his girlfriend, and he's looking to be set up with beautiful single women. And I thought to myself, who is the beautiful-est, single-est woman I know?"

"Neither of those are words, and you have to be kidding me. I'm not going out on a date with anyone right now," Sarah said incredulously.

"Why not?" Lauren grabbed a stack of sparkly pink paper plates and threw them in the cart. "It's something normal people do, and you keep talking about wanting your life to be normal again."

"Why not? Really? I currently have a stalker, as you might remember from our conversation all of two minutes ago."

"Well, that's true," Lauren said. "But from the sound of it, you and Leonard there are close to finding him and getting him put in prison. And then you have no reason not to go out on a few dates."

Sarah didn't mention the fact that if Matt were to run into Ronan, it would much more likely end in an extended hospital stay than a prison sentence for the latter.

"Yeah, because my current work situation isn't dangerous or anything, either," she said.

"You can't just put your whole life on hold because of your job, Sarah," Lauren said,more serious now. "A little casual dating might be good for you. To give you more to look forward to than going to work every day and hanging out with my pregnant ass."

Sarah chewed her lip as she considered it. "Ugh. I'll think about it. But right now the possibility of the answer being no is about…ninety percent."

Lauren beamed at her. "I've seen you change your mind on crazier things before."

**

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

**

When Matt knocked on her front door later that night, Sarah was still getting ready. They were supposed to have their first training session today, but she had inadvertently stayed out with Lauren longer than intended, and upon returning home she had found that she couldn't remember where she'd put her workout clothes during her organizing spree. She had finally procured some yoga pants that she hadn't worn in a year or two, along with an old tank top, which she was currently changing into.

"Hold on," she called out.

Tugging the tank top down as she crossed the living room, Sarah made sure to peer through the peep hole in the door to make sure it was actually Matt on the other side. Sure enough, through the distorted glass she could make out the sight of the tall blind man, wearing sweatpants and a slightly ratty sleeveless shirt, his white cane in one hand and a gym bag in the other.

She undid the multiple locks on the door and opened it. "Hey. Come in. I'm…almost ready."

This was true, save for the fact that she had no idea where her sneakers were. She knew they were somewhere in her bedroom, but beyond that it was a bit of a lost cause. She heard Matt leaning his cane against the wall and setting his gym bag on the floor before he followed her into her room.

"Lose something?"

"Um…everything, it seems like," she muttered, biting her thumb nail and rotating slowly in a circle as she looked around the room. "I organized my apartment and now I don't know where anything is."

Her eyes landed on the top shelf of her closet. It seemed like the next likely choice.  
Stretching up onto her tip-toes, Sarah grasped for the shoes but couldn't quite reach the back of the shelf where she was sure she'd pushed them. She let out a frustrated huff and stretched her arm up farther.

"You want some help?" Matt offered from the other side of the room, where he was lazily leaning against the door frame. She could hear in his voice that he was laughing at her even before she glanced over her shoulder for confirmation.

"No," she said stubbornly. On the floor of her closet there was a plastic bin full of old books she hadn't had space for on her bookshelf, and she hopped up onto it cautiously, making sure it was sturdy. The flimsy plastic lid made an groaning noise of protest, but didn't crack.

Sarah balanced precariously on it as she used the extra height to rummage around on the top shelf of her closet, coming across lots of old sweaters, music books, a well-used tuning kit, extra light bulbs, a few pairs of flip flops—but no sneakers. She huffed in annoyance and shifted her weight so that she could reach further down the shelf. The movement made the plastic bin creak ominously.

"That doesn't seem especially stable."

"It's fine," she insisted.

"If you fall and hurt yourself, that doesn't mean you get out of coming to the boxing gym with me," he said dryly.

She glared at him, but it wasn't as satisfying knowing that he couldn't see it. Instead, she settled for chucking a flip flop at his head. To her dismay, he ducked a few inches to the left, dodging it easily. She shook her head at the smirk on his face before turning back to the task at hand.

After another minute of rummaging through the junk that lived at the top of her closet, Sarah finally spotted her worn out sneakers sitting on top of a folded sweater. She reached out and grabbed them, accidentally pulling the sweater away with them. There was a quiet clattering noise as an object rolled out from under where the sweater had been: it was the tranquilizer dart she had stolen the night of the kidnapping at Orion. She'd almost forgotten it was there.

"What's up?" Matt asked when she stilled. Sarah moved the sweater over so that it was covering the dart gun once more.

"Nothing," she said distractedly. "Found my sneakers."

She hopped down from the bin and slipped one of the sneakers on. The other one took a minute longer to put on, as she had to be careful of the bandage and stitches that still adorned her foot. Tying her hair up into a ponytail, she grabbed her bag and turned to Matt, who was still leaning against the wall.

"Okay. So, where are we going to do this?"

**

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

**

Fogwell's Boxing Gym was old and kind of smelled like Sarah's high school gymnasium. The walls were lined with yellowing posters advertising boxing matches from years ago, and the entire place had a decidedly old-fashioned feel to it. From the moment Matt stepped foot inside, he looked like he belonged there, and Sarah wondered how long he had been coming here after hours, like the two of them were doing tonight.

Matt had given her a quick run down of the proper stance for the punch he was showing her, demonstrating on the bag a few times before stepping aside and letting her practice it herself. Unfortunately, it seemed like she would be needing a lot of practice.

For the dozenth time that night, Sarah swung her right fist out and hit the bag as hard as she could, and it swung a couple of inches, just as it had the last couple of times she tried. Matt shook his head, unsatisfied with either her efforts or the results-she wasn't sure which.

"You're push-punching, and you need to be snap-punching," Matt said after about twenty minutes of practice.

"What does that even mean?" she said, throwing a frustrated look at him where he stood next to the bag.

"The difference between someone being able to hit you back easily or not. It's a pretty good bet that whoever you're trying to hit is going to be bigger than you," Matt said. "So your goal should be to hit them with as much force as you can without lingering. You want to snap your hand back into your territory and out of theirs."

That made sense in theory, but she still wasn't sure how she was supposed to apply it to what she was doing.

"Here," he said, stepping closer to the bag and nodding at her to step back away from it. "Watch the difference, and listen for the noise. This is a push-punch." He punched the bag, creating a loud thudding noise as his fist made a deep indent on the surface of the bag before he drew his hand away. The bag swung wildly on its rope and he brought it back to a stationary position. "This is a snap-punch." There was a loud smack as he hit the bag quickly and powerfully, causing it to jump but not swing before snapping his hand back into position.

"Wait, so I _don't_ want the bag to swing?" Sarah clarified. "Because I've seen boxing movies, and the bag is always swinging all over the place."

"If you're just practicing to keep in shape, or to vent some steam, sure," Matt said, and Sarah couldn't help but think that he probably came here to vent steam pretty often. "For technique purposes, no. If you're hitting the bag as though it's an opponent, you want it to stay still. If the person you're hitting is moving in the same direction as the blow, they're not absorbing as much of the damage."

Sarah nodded, trying to keep this information in her head along with all of the other tips and instructions he had given her since they'd left the apartment. She had assumed this was something he took seriously-he fought people every night, after all-but she hadn't realized he would take training her so seriously.

"Okay," she said with a nod, and he stepped away from the bag so she could take his spot. She stepped forward, and he shook his head.

"Stay far enough away from the bag so that you can't make contact unless you rotate your whole body into the punch. Then you won't forget to do it."

"I don't really...get what you mean by that," she said hesitantly. "The whole rotating my body thing. Won't that throw me off balance?"

Matt shook his head again. "I get what you're asking, but if you do it right it should have the opposite effect. Your alignment is a little off, though."

Sarah wanted to ask what exactly was supposed to be aligned, but she was pretty sure he had already told her and she had just forgotten.

"Right," she said, readjusting her stance into what she thought was possibly a better one. She glanced up at Matt, who just tilted his head.

"Now your feet are wrong."

She exhaled and closed her eyes, feeling stupid that she couldn't even get the standing part of fighting right-how was she supposed to get the actual hitting people part right?

"I know it's a lot to keep track of," Matt said quietly, and she opened her eyes to look over at him. "You'll get the hang of it."

"We'll see," she muttered doubtfully. "I feel like I'm trying to keep it all straight in my head and I'm forgetting all of it."

Matt seemed to consider this for a few moments. "You're right. It's easier to learn it if you don't think about it so much. We'll try it a different way." He circled around until he was standing right behind her. "Go ahead and get into the stance you think is right. Don't overthink it."

Slightly thrown off by the fact that she couldn't see him, she arranged herself into what she hoped was something close to the correct stance.

Matt reached out and put a hand on each of her arms, moving them just slightly until they were in the desired position.

"Your arms are mostly in the right place, just keep your elbows more like this," he said, then let his hands drop away. "Make sure you're keeping your left hand up in front of your face if you're striking with your right hand."

Sarah nodded. "Okay."

"Alright? Keep them where I just put them. You want your feet to be shoulder width apart, not just wide set," he said, gently kicking her feet a few inches farther apart. "Where you position your feet is almost more important that what you do with your hands. They keep your balance, and a lot of the power for your right hook is going to come from turning on your right foot."

She jumped just slightly as she felt his one of his hands on her right shoulder and the other on her left hip. "When you punch, your whole body should turn into it. Your shoulder should move like this," he said, pushing her shoulder far forward. "And your hip like this." He pushed back against her left hip, causing most of her weight to shift onto her right foot. Surprisingly, he was right-she didn't feel like she would lose balance.

"If you're moving your shoulder forward, you don't need to extend your arm so much. Overextending just tires you out and puts you into their territory," he said, sliding his hand from her should down to her forearm, where he bent her arm out to a much smaller angle than she had been before returning it to its original stance. "Try not to go farther than that."

Matt stepped back, leaving her just as overwhelmed as she had felt a few minutes prior, though this time not so much by information. Sarah hoped he wouldn't call her out on the way her pulse had quickened slightly from his proximity-whether from nerves or something else, she wasn't sure.

"Alright. Try again."

Sarah took a deep breath and hit the bag, putting her weight on her right foot and turning her body with the punch. The bag jumped just slightly, but didn't swing. When she glanced over at Matt, he was grinning.

"Good. Go again."

About forty-five minutes later, Matt put his hand out to steady the bag in place and jerked his head towards the raised boxing ring in the center of the room.

"Alright. Ready to try out some things you can use with a real person?"

"What—now? Already?" she panted. She had only just started to get the hang of hitting the bag.

"Yeah. We'll do more with the punching bag next time. Right now, I want to make sure you know how to get away from an attacker more than I care about making you an attacker."

"Oh," she said, feeling slightly nervous again. "I was kind of thinking I would just be deal with, um...inanimate objects for a while."

"The bag is to help you get better at technique and strength, but the majority of the time you'll be sparring with me," he explained. "Learning to hit properly is important, but for someone your size and height, it's pretty likely that whoever you're fighting will be stronger than you. So it's more important to know where on their body you should hit them to do the most damage. That is, in the event that you can't simply get away from them, which is what I want to show you how to do right now."

Matt grabbed the ropes surrounding the old boxing ring, using them as leverage to swing himself up onto the platform. Then he turned back to Sarah expectantly.

"Come on."

"You know, maybe I'll just…stick with the bag for a while?" she suggested.

"Get in the ring, Sarah."

"I like the punching bag," she insisted half-heartedly, already aware that she was losing the argument. "I know that when I hit it, it isn't going to hit me back."

"Neither am I," he said, then thought about it for a second. "Not at this point, at least."

His words were less than comforting, and Sarah gave him a skeptical look. He pulled the ropes up with one hand for her to duck under them, extending the other hand down for her to take.

"Trust me."

Sarah heaved a deep sigh, shaking her head as she placed her hand in his. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't."

Matt grinned at her, that rare flash of a full smile, before easily pulling her up and into the ring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't even leave you guys with a cliffhanger, unless you count waiting for the second half of their training session. The drama and angst will return, but I figured we'd all have enough on our plates with how dark Season 2 looks. Enjoy your binge watching, friends!


	21. Impact

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay friends, first chapter since Season 2 premiered! I had a lot of good talks with you guys about what I liked/disliked this season, and in the reviews I saw a lot of you asking who/what from Season 2 I might incorporate into the story. To answer briefly: Frank Castle was amazing, but will not be appearing in this fic. I just can't work him into the plot I have laid out. Elektra might appear for a chapter or two to stir up some trouble, though. No ninjas.
> 
> Just a reminder that AO3 authors BurningThroughTime and AmyIssen and FFN authors BrittWitt16, Misery's-Toll, whodahoe, NicBarnes, MashedBraintatoes, HannahBananasxx, YoungInexperiencedHopefuls, ClockworkHare have all made amazing fan works for this story, ranging from drawings to edits to playlists to videos. All of the links can be found on my profile on here or FFN and they definitely deserve to be checked out!
> 
> Enjoy the chapter! I kept it mostly ( _mostly_ ) angst free just to help with the pain of Season 2 being over, but don't get used to it or anything.

Sarah loitered near the corner of the platform and watched Matt carefully as he walked along the perimeter of the ring, trailing his fingers along the rope. She felt a pale flutter of nervousness in her stomach as she realized that she really had no idea what kind of situation she was stepping into.

"Have you ever taught anyone how to fight before?"

"Nope," he said, coming to a stop at the opposite corner of the ring, where he leaned back against the ropes with his arms spread wide. "Why?"

Her mind flashed to standing on the roof, watching Daredevil brutally wrench a man's arm out of its socket, and she couldn't help but speculate as to how much of that side of him he was about to bring into the ring. She hadn't really thought to ask about how this whole thing would work, and now she found that she didn't know what to expect.

Matt tilted his head as she fidgeted with the stretchy boxing wrap that was wound around her hand. She had tried to mimic the complicated wrapping pattern that she'd watched Matt do, and she'd done a good enough job that it held out throughout her hitting the punching bag, but was now starting to come partially undone.

After a few moments, he pushed himself away from the ropes and crossed the ring, stopping in front of her and reaching out to fix the boxing wrap. He took her left hand and began slowly unraveling the wrap. Once it was undone, he started to redo it, working quicker and much more deftly than Sarah had. He didn't anything to her at first, so she waited, positive that he wasn't standing in front of her simply to help her with her boxing tape.

"Having second thoughts?" he asked quietly. She knew that he'd been picking up on her slight tick of nervousness.

"No. I just..." she shrugged, glancing around the ring before exhaling and figuring she might as well get right to the point. "Okay, scale of one to ten, with one being...Lawyer Matt who has pretty waitresses read menus for him. And ten being, like, straight-up Daredevil. Who am I looking at here?"

"Was that waitress pretty?" Matt asked innocently, and Sarah groaned.

"That's so not the point of the question."

Matt just nodded, apparently thinking about his answer as he continued wrapping her hand.

"Three?" He pressed his lips together and tilted his head as he reconsidered. "Three point five."

Sarah cast her eyes towards the ceiling and huffed slightly at how unsatisfactory her arbitrarily-chosen scale had been at helping her evaluate the situation, and Matt chuckled lightly at her reaction.

"I don't plan to take it easy on you, if that's what you're asking," he told her bluntly. "It would defeat the point. If you have to use anything I teach you against someone who isn't me, you know _they_ aren't going to go easy on you."

"Yeah…I noticed," Sarah muttered, thinking of the force with which Ronan had hit her across the face. It had taken weeks for those bruises to fade completely.

Matt kept his focus on re-wrapping her hand as they talked, allowing her to process what he was saying without that x-ray feeling he sometimes gave her.

"There's no way to show you how to defend yourself without putting you on the defensive, but…you know that I'm not going to hurt you, right?"

Something about the way he asked made Sarah question if he was reassuring her or if he was looking for her to reassure him.

She watched him wind the boxing wrap around her hand: bringing it around her wrist, then her knuckles, back down over her thumb. She couldn't help but be reminded of the last time she had watched him wrap her hands up, the night of her struggle with Ronan. The first real glimpse she'd had that Matt Murdock could be anything other than a threat.

"I know. It's just that this…" Sarah nodded to the boxing gym around them. "All of this is—is your world. I don't...really know what to expect."

"Well, luckily for you, I'm not the one in control of what happens in this ring," he informed her as he finished wrapping her left hand. "You are."

Sarah narrowed her eyes at him skeptically. "I think maybe you're confused. Probably the concussion you wouldn't let me ask about."

Matt laughed as he switched to the wrap on her right hand. "I'm serious. This is supposed to be an opportunity to help you, not an excuse to toss you around the ring. I mean it when I say I'll push your limits a bit, but in the end you're still the one who gets to set them. If you want to stop, we stop."

As she agreed, he finished up re-wrapping her right hand. The boxing tape was much tighter now than it had been, anchoring her wrist more.

"Plus...you'll get to hit me," Matt said with a wicked grin as he began slowly walking backwards, using his light hold on her wrist to tow her into the center of the ring. "Which I'm sure you've wanted to do since the day you met me."

Despite herself, Sarah laughed as Matt raised his eyebrows knowingly.

"I'm not answering that," she told him.

"I figured you might not," he stopped once they were both in the center of the ring, still hanging onto her wrist. "You ready?"

Sarah looked at him suspiciously, aware that he hadn't let go of her wrist yet. "I guess."

"Good," he said, and as she had suspected, he tightened his hold on her wrist. "We'll start here. If someone wants to keep you from running away or hitting them back, the easiest thing for them to do is grab your wrists, and it's hard to break a hold like that."

Sarah knew that already, of course—in part because Matt himself had used that particular hold against her more than once.

"If their hold isn't too tight, try to rotate your hand so that your thumb lines up here," he said, gesturing to where his thumb overlapped his index finger. "Then bend your elbow towards your body as hard as you can."

He loosened his grip slightly so that she could try it, which she did.

"And if their hold _is_ too tight?"

"That's when you get to have some fun figuring out the best places to hit them to make them loosen their grip."

"You have an interesting definition of fun," Sarah pointed out, to which Matt just smirked, before taking her wrist again.

"If they're trying to pull you towards them," he said, tugging her so that she stepped forward, "Go with it. They're expecting you to be try to pull away; instead you can surprise them by stepping even more in their space. They're already bringing your hand closer to them, meaning you can probably reach something you can hit: their nose, temple, windpipe."

They spent a while practicing having her hit the places he listed, with him easily deflecting her hits but allowing them to come close enough that she could gauge her aim. When they moved on to lower targets—the solar plexus, the side of the rib—he occasionally allowed her to actually land a blow, though they didn't seem to affect him much. As they practiced, he continuously reminded her to watch the placement of her feet and not to telegraph her moves by stepping into them. She struggled to remember that while also trying to focus on hitting him and then immediately retracting her arm—he warned her that the longer she stayed within reach of her opponent, the more likely it was that they were going to be able to grab ahold of her again.

To prove his point, Matt waited until one hit where she completely failed to retract her hand in time—landing a push punch instead of the desired snap punch. Before she could blink, his hand closed around her right wrist again, this time spinning her around so that her back slammed into his chest. He locked his other arm around her waist, pinning her left arm to her side so that she was effectively trapped in place.

"The longer you stay in their territory, the more opportunities you give them to get the upper hand," he reminded her, his voice calm in her ear.

Slightly frustrated, Sarah didn't wait for Matt to release her. He was holding her right wrist at such an angle that she could still move her arm, and she brought her elbow back into his ribs as hard as she could. He made a noise that was somewhere between a pained exhale and a laugh, but it seemed to do the trick, and he loosened his grip enough that she was able to break away.

When she spun around again to face him, she was surprised to see that wicked grin back on his face.

"Good," he told her. "Keep going."

So she did.

Considering the generally short fuse she had known him to have, Matt was surprisingly patient when she messed up—which was unfortunately often. But it wasn't long before she learned that he hadn't been lying when he said he wasn't going to take it easy on her.

As she focused on her aim and her attempts to quickly retract her fist, Sarah's concentration on the placement of her feet wavered.

Sarah went to aim at his temple, but realized a split second too late that she'd automatically stepped into the move, sacrificing the balanced stance she had had. She saw him cock his head slightly and quickly went to move her foot back but Matt had already zeroed in on her mistake. Before she could back out of his reach, he kicked her legs clean out from under her, so that she landed flat on her back in the ring. She gasped as the air was knocked out of her.

She felt Matt crouch down next to her and then a hand on her arm as he slowly pulled her into the sitting position.

"That's how easily you get knocked down if you don't pay attention to your feet," he told her. "You alright?"

"Yeah," she gasped.

"Do you want to stop?"

Sarah rubbed her back, which smarted slightly from the impact. "No."

Matt raised an eyebrow at her. "You're sure?"

"Positive."

"Alright." He stood up and held a hand down for her to take, but she swatted it away and struggled to her feet alone. With a laugh, he backed up to his original position and waited. "Whenever you're ready, then."

The lessons were effective, if irritating, and she was careful to concentrate on snapping her arm back and keeping her feet where they were supposed to be. This left little concentration for her to focus on her aim, but Matt insisted that the rest was more important, and her aim would develop with practice.

"Good. Better," he said approvingly as she snapped her hand back before he could grab it, despite the fact that she had failed to hit him in the solar plexus like he'd instructed-instead landing an ineffective blow somewhere near his upper abs. She shook her head at his definition of 'better', but continued on without comment.

It wasn't until Sarah's back hit the boxing ring floor for the third time that she felt tired enough to call it quits for the evening.

"You okay?" came Matt's voice from where he was crouched down next to her yet again.

To her surprise, she was. Her body ached a bit, and she was exhausted, but in a different way than she had been the last few weeks. Having to concentrate on something physical had left no room in her brain for the stressful thoughts that had been chasing themselves in circles lately.

"…not awful, actually," she decided, then groaned lightly as she sat up. "But, uh...definitely okay with calling it a night."

"You got it." Matt extended his hand down to her, and this time she took it, allowing him to pull her to her feet.

A few minutes later, they were both out of the ring and Sarah had just refilled her water bottle at the water fountain. She was absently studying the posters lining the walls as she drank when a familiar name caught her eye. Idly stepping closer to the poster, she blinked as she read the match it was advertising: _Carl Crusher Creel vs. Battlin' Jack Murdock._

She inhaled as she realized what boxing gym Matt had taken her to. She should have recognized the name of the place from the newspaper headlines she had read after the first time they met, about Jack Murdock's body being found in the alleyway out back.

"That was his last match."

Sarah jumped a little. She looked over her shoulder to see that Matt had come up behind her, his eyes cast in the general direction of the poster as he unwound the wrap from his hand. She instinctively felt almost guilty, as though she had intruded on something personal. But he didn't look upset, and he had been the one to bring her here, after all. She brought her gaze back to the yellowed paper on the wall.

"The Creel match?"

"Yeah," he said, coming to stand next to her. "Creel was a legend. Arrogant a son-of-a-bitch, but…he was a good boxer. It was a big deal to even get the chance to fight him."

"Did….did he win? Your dad?" she asked him hesitantly.

"He won the match, yeah. Only problem was, he wasn't supposed to," Matt said, a bitter smile twisting his lips. "I think everyone was surprised but me and him."

Sarah bit her lip as she watched Matt. The articles she'd scanned through had mentioned that Jack Murdock's death might have been connected to fixed fights, but none of them had gone into detail.

"I'm sorry," she said, aware that it wasn't helpful to hear, but not knowing what else to say.

"It was a long time ago," Matt said, before turning to her. "You ready to go?"

"Yeah." Sarah nodded, swallowing hard as she turned away from the poster. "Um, let me just…grab my bag. Do you have to go get ready to go out?"

Matt shook his head. "Not tonight. There's a pretty big storm coming in a few hours. Don't want to get caught in the middle of it."

"Can you not fight in the rain?" she asked him curiously. She had never considered the effect of the weather on what he did at night. What did he do when it was icy, or when it was pushing a hundred degrees and humid?

"No, no, rain is fine. It can be kind of helpful sometimes, actually. The way it hits things helps me place where they are. Thunder and lightning are what mess things up. The electricity from the lightning makes it hard to pick up on a lot of things I rely on…temperature, air density, electric currents, things like that. And thunder's just, well…" Matt shrugged. The concept was fairly self-explanatory.

"Kinda loud," Sarah finished for him.

"Pretty much," Matt said with a chuckle. "Makes it difficult to hear the things I need to hear. So I only go out in thunderstorms if it's absolutely necessary."

"Well…good. You could probably stand to take a night off from beating up bad guys, anyway."

"What about you?"

"What, will I be fighting crime tonight?" Sarah asked, slinging her small tote bag over her shoulder. "Hmm, no. Probably not tonight."

Matt rolled his eyes at her answer. "I meant, do you have plans to go out?"

"Definitely not. After this week I really need a couple of drinks. And as much as I'd love to not be trapped inside my apartment _again_ , going to a bar right now is kind of a bad idea, so…" she leaned back against the doorway behind her and shrugged. "I'll be home with a bottle of wine and a book. Exciting stuff."

Normally, a book and a bottle of wine did sound like a perfectly fine night to her, but it just wasn't the kind of night she needed right now. But she would take what she could get these days.

"You know…" Matt began, hooking his finger around the small loop on the top of his cane, which he had pulled out of his gym bag as they prepared to leave. "If you're dead set on drinking tonight—"

"—oh, I am—"

"—then there are other options for places to drink in Hell's Kitchen besides in a bar or in an apartment."

Sarah reached up and undid her ponytail, shaking her hair loose as she pulled the hair tie out. "Yeah? Do you know someplace where no one's going to be sneaking up behind me?"

"As a matter of fact, I know a few," Matt said. "We'd have to stop at the liquor store first."

"My home away from home."

"Yeah, well. You don't get to pick the liquor this time," he informed her as they exited the gym. At the last second, Sarah remembered the turn the lights off—something Matt obviously wouldn't be in the habit of doing.

"I'm more worried about your choice of drinking locale than your liquor. This isn't going to be in some sketchy alleyway, is it?"

"It's not in an alleyway," Matt assured her, but didn't bother to elaborate beyond that.

Sarah sighed. But wherever Matt was taking her, it was sure to be more interesting and less lonely than her empty apartment, so she followed him out of the gym and into the dark streets of Hell's Kitchen.

**

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

**

And so, about thirty minutes and one liquor store visit later, Sarah found herself sitting on the edge of a metal fire escape that snaked up a currently abandoned apartment building, her legs dangling over the side through the wide horizontal rungs of the railing. Matt was sitting next to her, unscrewing the lid from a bottle of whiskey.

"A fire escape. I should have seen that one coming," she noted, looking around. "One of your regular haunts."

"You wanted some place where no one would be looking for you."

Sarah couldn't argue with that; this wasn't one of her usual drinking spots, to say the least. No one—Ronan or any other unfriendly characters from her life—would be making any surprise appearances up here.

"So, why doesn't anyone live here?" she asked quizzically, squinting through the dark window behind them. The fire escape window led into a kitchen, which appeared to have nice granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. It didn't look like a run-down place.

"Oh, the safety codes weren't up to snuff," Matt said casually, before taking a drink from the bottle. "Something about the fire escapes being unstable."

Sarah whipped her head back around to look at Matt in alarm, but then she saw a familiar smirk playing across his face. She shook her head at him. "Very funny. When did you decide to grow a sense of humor?"

Matt's grin just grew wider as he passed her the bottle.

"Sorry. They're being renovated. It's just some interior stuff left now, I think," he said, before his grin faded slightly as he grew more serious. "They had to evacuate all these apartments when they were damaged in the, uh…incident, I guess people call it. And now the owner wants to draw in shiny new residents to live in his shiny new apartments."

Sarah watched him for a moment, noting how the faint bitterness in his voice was reflected in his expression. It seemed like a sore subject, for some reason.

"Well…joke's on him, because the local riff-raff have found their way back here anyway," she pointed out, using the bottle to gesture to their seat on the fire escape before taking a drink. The whiskey Matt had picked was smooth and easy to drink straight, unlike the last bottle of liquor the two of them had shared. She nodded her approval, passing the bottle back to Matt. "You know, I could have bought the liquor. Drinking _was_ my idea."

"Well, I figured I owed you for ruining your kitchen knife."

"And one of my mugs," she reminded him.

"If I recall correctly, you said you got that mug for subscribing to a magazine, so…" he shrugged apologetically. "Unfortunately, you forfeited your claim to that reimbursement."

Sarah laughed, shaking her head as she looked down at the dark pavement far below them. She muttered something about him being a dick under her breath, knowing he would hear her. He just raised his eyebrows as he took a swig from the bottle, and they were quiet for a few moments.

"Hey, where were you for the whole, um…alien thing?" she asked. "Were you Daredevil-ing at that point?"

"No. Not until…a little over a year later, I guess. Aliens are a little out of my wheelhouse, anyway. I was at this law firm that Foggy and I used to intern for and they put the whole place on lock down. No one in, no one out. But especially no one in," Matt said, frowning darkly. "Landman and Zack at its best."

"Landman and Zack?" Sarah repeated, throwing him a strange look. "You interned there?"

"Yeah. You've heard of them?"

"Um, _yeah_. They do a ton of business with Orion's sketchier clients."

Matt shook his head bitterly. "I'm not surprised."

"I'm surprised you guys interned there. They seem kind of…"

"Soulless? They are. That's why we quit to start our own firm, to, ah…varying degrees of success," he said wryly, before turning his head to her. "Where were you?"

"Me? I was in a concert hall. Accompanying this singer who I had worked with a few times before. She's amazing," Sarah recalled, thinking of the singer and how perfectly she had kept with the rise and fall of the piano, rather than leading or falling behind, like so many other partners did. "She was so good at keeping with the pulse of the song, if that makes sense. Anyway, the acoustics made it hard to hear everything that was going on outside; I think we thought it was just a bad surprise thunderstorm. We were in the middle of her fifth song when half the roof came right off."

Matt pressed the bottle back into her hand, and the two of them were quiet for a few moments as Sarah took a drink and looked out at the construction sites that had popped up across Hell's Kitchen since the incident.

"God, I hate this stupid city sometimes," she said finally. "Aliens, and bombs exploding, and creepy corporations with their fingers in everything," she said, before turning to look at Matt. "You know who doesn't have these problems?"

"…most people who aren't us?" Matt guessed.

"Hermits," she said resolutely. "Old mountain men who live up in the Adirondacks."

Matt furrowed his brow and laughed. "Are you thinking of becoming one?"

"I'm not ruling it out," she decided, taking another drink. "I could pack up the mouse and just go live in the woods. It'd be like camping. I'm good at camping."

"Yeah? I've never been."

"Really?" she said as she handed the whiskey to him. "I think you'd like it. You could get away from the smell of old trash and cigarette smoke and car exhaust."

"I don't know," Matt said doubtfully. "I've never left here. I'm used to hearing the sounds of the city all the time. Being out where it's so quiet sounds like it would be…disconcerting."

"It's not as quiet as you'd think. But in a good way," Sarah said, thinking of the sound of cicadas and wind blowing across water that she always loved whenever she'd gone camping. Then she realized what he'd just said. "Wait, so you've never left New York City?"

"No. Why would I?"

"Well, _because_ …" Sarah had to search for the words, dumbfounded by the idea that he needed an actual reason to leave New York. "There's just…there's a ton of other stuff out there. Good stuff, like beaches that don't have trash in the water, and mountain tops you can get drunk on instead of fire escapes."

"I don't know. Maybe if I ever decide to take a vacation someday," Matt said, his tone indicating that he didn't plan on doing so any time soon.

"You should. Just, like…send a telegram to the Avengers," Sarah told him, gazing across the city to where she could barely make out the red 'A' atop Stark Tower. "Let them know they need to watch over Hell's Kitchen for a few days while you dip out."

He shook his head and laughed. "I think stopping muggers and crashing arms deals might be a little small time for them."

"Small time is important, too. I mean, saving the world is great and all—I'm way glad someone does it. But if the world ends…well, that's it, right? We'd all be dead, so we won't be around to care. The day-to-day stuff in between massive alien invasions…that's what people need more help dealing with." She looked over at Matt and was surprised at how intently he seemed to be listening to what she was saying. "No offense to the Avengers, though. Lauren adores them. So does my dad."

She picked at the edge of the bottle's label as Matt was quiet for a minute.

"How is your dad?"

Matt rarely brought up her father; he had clearly caught on that the topic was a touchy one. Generally, he only mentioned him in the context of stopping by his place during his patrols.

"He's…lonely, I think," she said truthfully. "I don't have as much time to stop by anymore, with my work hours being so unpredictable. And he's mentioned it a few times. I still go see him when I can, but even if I'm there, it…it doesn't always mean he is, you know?"

Matt nodded, his expression solemn as he listened.

"I'm sorry," he said simply. He didn't offer any advice or platitudes, which she appreciated. Sarah had sat through more than one well-meaning person talking her ear off about coconut oil or acai berries or whatever other nonsense was supposed to help Alzheimer's, as though she were trying a new diet instead of watching her father's mind destroy itself. Worse yet were the ones who insisted that everything happened for a reason—always spoken with such earnestness that Sarah couldn't even bear to tell them how much that didn't help to hear.

She rested her head on her arms, which were folded on the rail of the fire escape, and watched Matt as he drank from the bottle. The alcohol was definitely taking its effect, and she could feel that familiar warm sensation spreading throughout her limbs and lending her a sense of candor she normally didn't have.

"Is that what changed your mind?" she asked him quietly.

Matt furrowed his brow, not following what she was saying. "Changed my mind about what?"

"About me. Is that why you…eased off on all the alleyway threats? Because you found out about my dad?"

There was a long pause, and in the dark she found it hard to read his expression.

"No."

"Then what was it?"

Matt looked like maybe he was going to tell her, but instead he just jerked his head to the side noncommittally and took a drink from the bottle. She waited, but he remained quiet.

"You really aren't going to answer?"

"This isn't one of your drinking games with the special rules," he reminded her gently, passing the bottle of whiskey back. "I don't have to answer your questions."

She raised her eyebrows at his evasiveness, but didn't push the subject.

"Alright. Well…good thing it's not a drinking game. The last one kept me in bed until like noon the next day, and I have to meet up with Lauren in the morning for more baby shower stuff," she said, taking a drink.

"You know, some people who are being stalked and getting injured might go ahead and let someone else take over the party planning," Matt said, and Sarah immediately recognized a hint of the same tone he used when he told her to lock her windows, or not to answer Ronan's phone calls. She cut off whatever safety lecture was coming with a small noise of protest as she brought the bottle back down from her lips.

"No, no. This baby shower is literally the one thing right now that I would still be doing if I had my old life back. It's important. I can give up going to bars and stuff for a while, but this shower is non-negotiable."

Matt held his hands up in mock surrender, his lips quirking up at the corners. "Okay. Okay. It was just an observation."

Sarah just hummed neutrally, unconvinced that this was the last he'd have to say on the topic. He held his hand out for his turn with the bottle, then let out a surprised laugh as Sarah purposefully took a much longer drink instead of passing it to him. Finally she did give him the bottle, and they sat in a comfortable silence for a while as Sarah watched the lights of the city reflect off the Hudson in the distance, and Matt—well, she didn't know what he was doing. Listening to some conversation five blocks away, probably.

"It wasn't any specific thing," he said quietly, breaking the silence.

Sarah looked over at him, and it took her a second to realize that he had backtracked in their conversation, returning to her unanswered question from earlier. "No?"

"No," Matt said simply. He wet his lips, picking his words carefully before continuing. "Mostly it just…became more difficult, the more I got to know you. Hurting you like that. It's—it's easy to intimidate a stranger, usually. And I tried my best to keep you at arm's length, but…at some point, you weren't a stranger anymore. You were just you. And you're not someone I wanted to hurt."

Perhaps it was the alcohol, but hearing the usually taciturn vigilante talk about her like that had the interesting effect of making it difficult for Sarah to breathe, and she had to look away from him for a few moments to gather her thoughts again.

As though he could sense how his explanation had affected her, he held the bottle out towards her and said, in a carefully lighter tone, "Plus, you started tearing people's faces open with staplers. I didn't want to be on the receiving end of that."

"That was a fluke, and it was a one-time thing," she protested, but felt the corner of her lips tug upwards as she accepted the bottle.

"Bullshit. Did you not slice a guy across the face with a kitchen knife just a few days ago?" Matt asked, sounding darkly amused.

Sarah paused, unable to think of an argument for that one.

"He was being unfriendly."

Matt let out a sharp laugh. "I'd say so. I seem to remember you hitting me in the mouth with a very heavy bottle opener on your key ring, as well."

"—alright, I'm glad you're enjoying this list so much—"

"How about that guy you hit with a fire extinguisher?"

"Well—I—how did you even notice that?" she asked in exasperation. "Weren't you fighting like a…zillion armed men while that was going on?"

"Yeah, armed men who were in the same room as you. And you were noticeably _not_ staying in the corner like I distinctly remember telling you to do," he reminded her pointedly. "Did you think there was a chance I wouldn't be keeping an ear in your direction?"

Sarah recalled the way Matt had immediately appeared in front of the man she'd hit with the extinguisher, taking him down before he could turn and retaliate against her.

"Is there a point you're trying to make?" she asked finally, unable to refute any of the examples he was bringing up.

"Just that you're not as bad at defending yourself as you keep making yourself out to be. Those definitely weren't all flukes. I think you'll pick up new stuff pretty quickly."

"I hope so," she said, eyeing the darkened skin around her knuckles. They were already starting to lightly bruise from the repeated impact against the punching bag, despite the wrap she had been wearing around them. Oddly, she found that she didn't mind. At least they were bruises that she had put there herself, and they meant she was working towards something instead of just blindly swinging makeshift weapons at the world. "When are we doing another session?"

"We'll wait a couple of days. I think you're going to be a lot sorer when you wake up tomorrow morning. Once your muscles have caught up and the alcohol has left your system," he said, reaching over to pluck the bottle from her hands and take a drink himself.

"How did you learn all of this stuff, anyway?" she asked him curiously. He'd vaguely mentioned learning meditation from someone, but beyond that he hadn't gone into detail about how he'd become the way he was today.

Matt exhaled slowly. "That's…a long story. I had a teacher for a while, when I was a kid. He left. After that, I had to find other ways to train."

"Must have been a good teacher," she noted, thinking of the few times she had seen Matt in full-on fight mode.

"He was, in a lot of ways. The things he taught me...I needed to learn them. But he had a lot of plans that we didn't see eye to eye on. He wanted me to make myself…tougher. Harder. More cut off from the world. I like to think that it didn't work, but I know that in some ways it did."

Sarah thought about what it would be like to not constantly have emotions hitting her like a battering ram. Fear, and guilt, and anger…it was exhausting. Having a barrier between the world and her heart sounded like somewhat of a relief, to be honest. And it was something she had never been very good at.

"Doesn't sound so bad to me. Kind of useful, actually. Being able to harden yourself to the world. Maybe that's what you need to teach me," Sarah said thoughtfully, noticing for the first time how her voice had become slightly raspy from the alcohol. "Maybe I could stand to lose some of my softness."

Her words seemed to have a strange effect on him, and he tilted his head towards her, his sightless eyes flicking to different spots in her direction, as though he were analyzing her.

"Don't you dare," he said very quietly.

Something about the soft sadness in his tone made Sarah's heart constrict, and she cleared her throat.

"You don't seem so cut off from the world to me," she noted, passing the bottle back to him. "I've met your friends, so I know you have some. You have a career. You go to church."

Matt was silent for a long time, lost in thought. When he finally spoke again, he didn't address the points she had made.

"Maybe we've had enough for tonight," he said, handing the bottle to her without taking a drink. "Last time we killed an entire bottle, it ended in some pretty bad hangovers."

"That was cheap vodka," she argued, peering down at the label on the bottle in her hand. "This is…solidly mid-shelf liquor. You can't get hangovers from that."

"Says who?"

Sarah waved her hand around for a few seconds while she thought about it. "…science."

"Convincing argument. But I think I'm cut off for the night," Matt said with an amused shake of his head. He leaned back until he was lying flat on his back on the fire escape, his blank eyes directed up at the metal structure above them.

"Lightweight," she muttered.

She could hear his chuckle from the shadows he was lying in. "I'm pretty far from sober, and you're tiny, so I _know_ you've got to be drunk, too."

Sarah laughed, but she had to admit that Matt was right. The alcohol was starting to make her just slightly dizzy—always a good sign that she was soon about to go from pleasantly drunk into black-out territory. Lying down to make the dizziness stop didn't sound like such a bad idea. She slowly leaned back until she was lying on her back next to him, letting her hands rest on her stomach. Her tank top didn't offer much in the way of a barrier from the cool metal of the fire escape against her back, but between the alcohol pumping through her and the warmth of Matt's side pressed against her own, she didn't feel cold.

"Can you tell how long until the storm starts?"

Matt was silent for a minute as he listened, and Sarah mentally tried to guess what weird sensory tricks he was doing to figure out the answer to her question. "Soon. I'd say a little less than an hour. Why?"

"I was just thinking we might not want to be sitting on a tall, metal fire escape when the lightning begins," she said, laughing as she gestured to their chosen drinking spot. She could feel the vibrations of his laugh next to her.

"Fair point. We'll get off of here before then."

They laid there in silence for a few minutes, and Sarah found herself wondering if the alcohol in her system would at least help her fall asleep tonight. And stay asleep, preferably. She usually dreamed less when she had been drinking, and considering her dreams usually came in the form of nightmares these days, she was more than happy to avoid them.

"Hey. Can you see when you dream?" she asked Matt suddenly.

He didn't respond right away, and she turned her head to look at him. It was difficult to hazard through the cloud of alcohol whether or not the question had been too personal, but there it was.

"When you dream, your mind mimics what you experience when you're awake," Matt answered haltingly, like he was still formulating his answer as he spoke. "When I very first went blind, I would always dream in pictures. It was just how I understood the world."

"But not anymore?" Sarah asked, turning her head forward again so that she was staring up through the slats of the fire escape.

She felt Matt shrug next to her. "Now I pretty much dream the way I experience everything else: sounds, smells…things like that."

"So you never actually see anything in your dreams anymore?"

"I wouldn't say never. There are a few things from before I went blind that still show up as clear as they ever were. Like the sky. Or my dad. But people who I've never seen, like you or Foggy…I don't have a picture to work with. So my mind pieces things together based on what I know about you, but…it's not the same thing. It's difficult to explain."

Sarah's inebriated mind couldn't decide if it wanted to focus on the uncharacteristically personal details Matt had just shared with her, or if it was still stuck on the implication that she had shown up in his dreams at some point. Mostly she just felt like her head was spinning, and she couldn't be entirely sure that it was from the alcohol. Matt sat up rather suddenly and inhaled deeply.

"Come on," he said, clearing his throat and using the railing of the fire escape to haul himself up before extending a hand down for her to take. "I'll take you home."

**

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

**

Monday, Sarah sat at a table in an upscale restaurant, scanning an expensive menu full of foods she didn't recognize. Jason sat across from her, and to her left sat an empty chair as they waited for their mysterious third guest to arrive. Whoever it was was already twenty minutes late, and Sarah was just beginning to wonder if Jason was insane enough to have invented an imaginary lunch companion when she saw his eyes flick over her shoulder and his false grin grew even wider and falser.

"Sorry I'm late," came a soft, accented voice from behind her. "There was horrible traffic on the way here."

Sarah turned to see who the strangely familiar voice belonged to, and a dark-haired woman came into her view as she took a seat at the table. She was immediately recognizable as the woman Sarah had met on the sidewalk recently.

"Well, hello," she greeted Sarah. "I remember you."

"You two have met?" Jason said curiously, his smile never dropping but his tone betraying his confusion.

"Just for a few moments," Sarah said quickly. "Outside work one time."

"We didn't get a chance to exchange names," the woman told Jason, before looking back to Sarah expectantly.

"Oh, um...I'm Sarah Corrigan. I...work for Jason," she said lamely, realizing as she said it that it was already obvious.

"Vanessa," the brunette replied, a small smile quirking her lips at Sarah's awkward fumbling.

The waiter approached them to take their orders. Jason rattled off some expensive sounding French dish, and Sarah picked one at random that sounded like it had ingredients she recognized. When it was her turn, Vanessa simply held her hand up.

"Just a glass of wine for me, please. I'm afraid I can only stay for a few minutes," she said. The waiter nodded and disappeared, and Vanessa turned back to them. "I just came by to meet Jason's new...right-hand man."

Sarah blinked. "Right. That's me."

So that was happening, then? Jason had only vaguely insinuated that he wanted her to work with him in his efforts to earn a higher position at Orion, and now she was being called his right-hand man. It all made her feel like she had missed something, but Jason and Vanessa both carried on speaking as though everything was perfectly normal.

"There are so many things that we've dropped the ball on since…" Jason faltered, glancing over at Vanessa before quickly pressing on. "It's time that the company got back to what it once was. A place where the influential people of Hell's Kitchen feel comfortable taking their business."

"Okay," Sarah said slowly. "How do we do that?"

"By eliminating the things that are standing in its way. Both internal and external obstacles, you could say."

She wasn't entirely sure what that meant, so she remained quiet, simply nodding instead.

Vanessa leaned forward slightly, tracing her finger around the rim of her wine glass. "I heard that you turned down a very tempting bribe recently, Sarah."

Sarah froze, the sound of her own heart racing deafening in her ears. She didn't bother to pretend like she didn't know what Vanessa was talking about.

"I…didn't have the information they needed," she said, surprised and grateful that her voice sounded steady. "Taking money without giving anything in return seemed like a bad idea."

"I should say so," Jason said with a chuckle. "Two other people offered the same bribe attempted to do just that, and…it didn't end well for them. In the end, that was really the point."

"I thought the point was to catch the man in the mask," Sarah said.

"No, no. Obviously that's something we're working towards, but…it wasn't the point of that particular experiment. I had a short list of people I thought might be useful to me, and I wanted to make it shorter. This was an easy way to see who was disloyal enough to the company to try to take that money and run—and you had as much reason as anyone to do just that."

Sarah stared at him.

"So everything the police said about seeing a dark haired woman talking to Daredevil that night at the office?" she asked, then quickly added. "I figured they just had me confused with another employee…but I never heard anything else about it."

"Well, that part was more to give our contacts on the police force an excuse to bring you in. They were understandably worried about their jobs, so we had a different story laid out for each suspect they were going to talk to, in case anyone decided to check in on their activities. Something just specific enough to make whoever they were talking to think they were the main suspect."

The realization slowly hit Sarah that the girl had never really seen her talking to Matt at all that night.

"Wait, so what did the girl in the hospital actually say when she woke up?"

Jason shrugged. "Who knows. Something about wanting to be with her family. It wasn't important what she actually said; what mattered was what we had our translator say she said."

"So, you never actually thought I was working with Daredevil?"

"Me, personally? No. That would require a certain level of recklessness that I just don't think you possess," he said. Sarah wasn't sure what flashed across her face at his words, but he held up a conciliatory hand and added, "You're level-headed. You look out for what's best for you and your own, and I can understand that. I can't see you going out on any limbs that might put that at risk. Ronan, on the other hand...he was fairly suspicious of you."

"Suspicious isn't the word I'd use for his opinion of me," Sarah said, trying to keep her voice neutral, but it came out cold. She hadn't forgotten the way that Jason had merely stood by while Ronan wrapped his hands around her throat.

"Regardless, his opinion doesn't hold much weight in any arena."

"Ronan was in charge of your...task-force, yes?" Vanessa inquired, and Sarah could have sworn she saw Jason wince.

"Unfortunately. Ronan's ideas for bringing the vigilante down were only slightly more cerebral than a Looney Toons plot. Paint a tunnel on the mountain, maybe the road runner will come," Jason said mockingly. "I found him to be...repetitive. There are much more intelligent ways to hurt the man in the mask without putting a handful of Orion employees in the hospital each time."

"Like what?" Sarah said carefully, keeping her tone barely interested. Internally, however, her heart was pounding.

"Oh, don't worry about that for now," Vanessa said as she took a sip from her drink. "He's not at the top of our priority list at the moment."

"What is, then?"

"For now? Combing through our employees. Figuring out who doesn't add anything of value, and replacing them with people who do," Vanessa said. "I have no plans to leaving Wilson's empire in anyone's hands without making sure it's in proper order first."

Sarah tilted her head slightly at the woman's use of Fisk's first name—she wasn't sure she had ever heard anyone do that before.

Vanessa checked the time on her watch, which was delicate and expensive looking. "Unfortunately, I have to go. But I look forward to talking to both of you again soon."

A few formal goodbyes later, she was gone, and she was left with only Jason again.

"Well. It's all very exciting, isn't it?" he asked her.

"Um...yes," she said, failing at sounding enthusiastic.

Jason sighed. "I know why you aren't more excited, Sarah."

She carefully stirred the food on her plate with her fork. "You do?"

"Yes. You're upset about the officers that we assigned to monitor you're father. It's understandable, but it was simply a safety measure. If you're trying to understand someone's character, who better to get information from than their own family?"

Sarah bit her tongue to tamp down the anger that rose in her at the thought of Jason sending dirty cops to spy on her father. This entire deal was meant to keep her dad away from Orion. She gripped her fork tighter, wishing that she never had to hear Jason talk about her family again. But her silent, fuming wishes went unheard, and Jason continued anyway.

"It's not like he was ever in any danger. The officers we sent are trustworthy."

"Then you might want to ask them why they're working with Ronan," Sarah snapped before she could stop herself.

Jason looked at her intently. "Excuse me?"

"I...nothing," she said, immediately regretting it. "I just-I've heard from some people that Ronan has some cops working for him. I-it sounded like it might have been the same two you hired."

She winced internally. That was the vaguest answer she could have possibly given, and she had nothing planned out for any follow up questions.

But Jason merely looked down at his phone, seemingly uninterested. "I see."

He remained focused on his phone for the rest of lunch, leaving Sarah with just her own thoughts.

**

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

**

Later that day, just before Sarah was about to pack up to leave, Jason came out of his office and asked her to come with him.

A deep feeling of dread settling into her stomach, Sarah slipped her phone into her pocket before following him into the elevator. To her dismay, he hit the button to take them up to the fourth floor. The floor was completely empty, and he led her a short ways down the hallway before gesturing for her to step into a room off to their right.

The room was clearly intended to be an office sometime soon—it was being renovated, with fresh white paint on all of the walls and white sheets under their feet to protect the carpeting. Brand new window frames sat leaning against the wall, apparently waiting to replace the cracked and peeling old ones. The only things breaking up all of the white were a single desk in the middle of the room that didn't look like it belonged there, and several chairs around it in a fashion that mirrored the set up Jason and downstairs in his own office. Painting and construction supplies were littered everywhere; paint cans on the ground, a hammer and a tool box sitting on the desk top.

"Do you know what this is?" Jason asked her.

"An empty office?" she ventured.

"Yes. More specifically, it's an empty office that I hope will eventually become my own. Sometimes I like to come up here to clear my head," he said, looking around the space. "Come to terms with certain things."

"Oh," Sarah said softly, unable to think of anything else to say. Something about his demeanor was making her nervous, but she couldn't put her finger on what. The room they were in wasn't helping. It wasn't just the isolated area, it was the strange sense of déjà vu it gave her, despite knowing that she had never been there.

"I looked into it after lunch, and it turned out you were right," Jason continued. "Officers McDermott and Donovan are in fact working for Ronan, despite explicitly stating that their loyalty would be to Orion above all else—including their own police force. You know what I don't like, Sarah?"

She shook her head wordlessly, watching him with wide eyes. It wasn't just his words that were making her hair stand on end; it was something about the way he looked.

"Disloyalty. Liars. Employees who make a fool of this company."

She swore that everyone in the building must have been able to hear how badly her heart was racing as he listed word after word that described her exactly.

"Yates was an excellent example. I know you cared for him in some way, but his behavior as an employee was just...unacceptable," Jason said, stopping next to the desk and idly tracing his finger down the handle of the hammer sitting on it.

It occurred to her suddenly that Jason wasn't smiling like he usually did; his face was so deadly serious that she barely recognized it.

Sarah tensed as she watched him, but he was closer to her than she was to the door. Even if she got through it, the stairwell was at the other end of the building, leaving only the slow elevator as an exit on this side.

As if on cue, she heard the ding of elevator as someone arrived on their floor. She felt relieved for a second, before she saw that Jason didn't look surprised; whoever was coming must be someone he had invited.

Of all the people she expected to see walk through the door, Officer Aaron McDermott wasn't one of them.

He looked equally confused to see her, but didn't say anything, instead turning towards Jason.

"Some reason you needed to meet with me right away? While I'm on duty?"

"I do appreciate you coming by," Jason said cheerfully. "Please, take a seat."

McDermott threw Sarah a suspicious look before taking a seat in from of the desk that Jason stood next to. It was odd seeing the cop without the falsely kind facade he had projected in his past attempt to win her trust. Then again, the last time she had seen him, they hadn't parted on good terms, so maybe he knew there was no point.

"Do either of you know what the name 'Jason' means?"

McDermott just wrinkled his brow, as thrown by the subject as Sarah had been when Jason and first brought it up. But she had grown curious after his strange conversation on names that day, and had idly looked up a few names on her phone while waiting for the bus. So, strangely, she did know.

"...healer," she said very quietly, barely above a whisper.

Jason looked pleased, and pointed at her. "Exactly. I plan to heal this organization, no matter how difficult it is."

McDermott looked from Sarah to Jason as though they were crazy. "Sorry, what are we talking about here?"

"Do you know the other definition?" Jason asked her, ignoring the police officer.

Sarah tried to think, but the adrenaline pumping through her veins was making it difficult to remember. She swallowed and shook her head. She didn't even realize she had instinctively backed up until she felt her back bump against the wall.

"It's similar to the first meaning. It means, 'One who does no harm.'" The wide smile returned to his face as he turned his gaze back to McDermott. For a split second, Sarah felt relief rush through her—doing no harm seemed like a good sign—and she could see it had the same effect on McDermott. But then Jason shrugged and heaved a sigh as his fingers curled around the handle of the hammer. "But Jason's not my real name, anyway."

With that, he swung the hammer up and under McDermott's jaw, embedding the sharp end directly into his throat.

Blood gushed from the man's throat and mouth as he choked, no noise coming from him beyond a wet rattling sound as he tried to breathe. It must have last less than half a minute, but it felt like hours, and Sarah didn't breath for one second of it.

He finally stopped, slumping down in his chair as his eyes drifted halfway shut. The silence pressed down on them as Sarah leaned against the wall in shock, feeling as though the air had been knocked out of her.

"Well," Jason said, letting go of the hammer instead of removing it from the man's throat, so that it simply slid out and down into his lap. "I'm glad that he was able to meet me today. That would have kept me up all night had I left it until tomorrow."

Sarah didn't reply, unable to tear her eyes away from the officer in the chair.

"I'd really rather not leave him on the property," Jason said, pulling a cloth handkerchief out of his pocket and wiping the specks of blood of his hand. "My recommendation would be for you to take him to the warehouse you delivered to a few weeks ago. But, of course, deal with it how you see fit."

She vaguely registered the implication that Jason expected her to get rid of McDermott's body, but she couldn't do anything but shakily gasp for air as Jason left without another word.

Now alone in the room with McDermott—with what used to be McDermott—the reality of what just happened hit Sarah hard. She leaned forward and put her hands on her knees, hanging her head as she tried to stop the room from spinning. She squeezed her eyes shut to avoid looking at the body that sat a mere two feet in front of her.

With her eyes closed, Sarah didn't notice the slight twitching in McDermott's hand as his eyes fluttered open, out of focus. She didn't see him weakly grasp the hammer in his lap, his last chance at any act of self-defense. She opened her eyes just in time to see him swing the hammer towards her with every last ounce of strength in his dying body.

She moved just in time, and the blunt end of the hammer clipped her temple instead of embedding itself in her skull. Even so, the force of the impact sent her reeling, and she stumbled to her knees a few feet away. Her vision swam, dotted with black, and she tried to regain her surroundings as the room seemed to slam to the side.

Shaking her head to try to clear her vision, she forced herself to focus on McDermott, who was still slumped in the chair nearby. The hammer had dropped to his feet after he swung—she'd been so thrown by the blow to the head that she hadn't even heard it hit the floor. She scrambled forward, ignoring the way that the world tilted on its axis with the movement, and grabbed the hammer, wielding it in her hand as she backed out of reach again.

But she needn't have worried. McDermott's face was slick with sweat, and he made small choking noises as blood continued to seep out of his mouth, darker now than it was before. Sarah, still grasping the handle of the hammer tightly, watched in horror as his body twitched a few more times before going still.

She took a step forward, waiting for him to move but in some distant part of her mind already knowing that he wouldn't. Hesitantly, she pressed her shaking fingers against the pulse point on his neck, coating her fingers in thick blood and feeling for where a heartbeat should have leapt against his skin. Instead, she just felt blood and stillness.

Stumbling back from the dead body, she slid down the wall and sat there for a long time—or maybe it wasn't; the passing of time seemed difficult to grasp as her head pounded worse than it ever had before—and when she was finally able to look away from the bloody man in the chair, it was only to look down at the blood that was slowly drying on her skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. I said it was _mostly_ without angst and pain. Coming up next is a chapter I've really been looking forward to writing: the baby shower, which will obviously go very smoothly, and nothing will go wrong whatsoever. Also appearing in the next chapter: Grumpy Doctor Matt! And just to mix things up, some Sarah/Foggy scenes and Matt/Lauren scenes.


	22. Recognition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this chapter took a month. I'm sorry. On the bright side (unless you hate reading) it's extra extra extra long—basically two chapters in one—to celebrate the fact that May 19th will mark one year since I published this story on here! I just want you guys to know how much you and this fic mean to me. Writing about Matt and Sarah and hearing your feedback has done so much to remind me of what I love about writing and fandoms. When I'm having a bad day, I often go back and re-read reviews or PM conversations and it always cheers me up. Some of you just tuned in and some of you have been reviewing since chapter one, and I'm so grateful no matter what. Y'all make my nerd heart sing.
> 
> Alright, enough sentimentality; on with the pain. This chapter is sort of rock bottom for Sarah, but the nice thing about rock bottom is that there's nowhere to go but up, which is what we'll start to get in the next few chapters.

###  Twenty Two: Recognition

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

Sarah's head felt impossibly heavy, and her mind couldn't stop bouncing around, unable to complete one thought before it shifted to a different one. She was hit by a wave of nausea and rested her head against the wall behind her, closing her eyes for a few moments to try to collect herself.

When she opened her eyes again, she blinked at the darkness outside the window. It had been light out just a few minutes ago. How long had she been sitting there? Her eyes flicked to the bloody man still slumped in the office chair. She waited for the familiar feeling of panic to well up in her chest, but strangely it didn't come. Instead, she just struggled to figure out what to do.

Her first thought was to call Matt.

_No_ , she reminded herself, resisting the urge to look up at the security cameras she knew were above her. If Jason looked back through them and saw her calling someone, he would undoubtedly want to know who it was. She would have to do this alone.

Sarah struggled to her feet, leaning heavily on the wall behind her for support as the room tilted. Even that simple movement made her head feel like it was splitting open.

She approached McDermott hesitantly, holding her breath as she patted down the front of his blood-soaked suit jacket until she felt the outline of his cell phone. She reached a shaking hand into the inner pocket of the jacket to retrieve it and was surprised to feel not one, but two phones. A smart phone and what felt like a flip phone—probably a burner. Sarah hesitated for a split second, still very aware of the cameras above her, before pulling out the smart phone and leaving the burner phone out of sight.

The smart phone's battery wasn't the removable kind, and she wasn't sure if just turning the phone off would be enough to stop its location from being tracked. Placing the phone on the desk, she grabbed the hammer and brought it down onto the screen. The fiberglass shattered immediately upon contact, and she hit the phone a few more times until she was sure the battery was destroyed.

The phone out of the way, she turned back to McDermott. Her eyes drifted down to the bottom of the chair and she sent up a silent thank you that the office chair he was on had wheels. Stumbling a bit, she began to slowly and clumsily steer the chair out of the room. There was nothing she could do about the cameras as she guided the heavy man towards the elevator, but surely this wasn't the most illegal thing they had witnessed in this building. Jason was the only one who viewed them anyway.

Several times she had to stop and push McDermott's body upright as he began to slump out of the chair. The process was slow, and she was exhausted by the time she exited the elevator on the very bottom level, which consisted of an underground parking garage for employees. It was mostly empty by this point, save for a few company cars. One of the security guards—a thin, greasy looking man she thought might have been there the night of Ronan's failed kidnapping trap—was lounging in his booth, watching a basketball game on his laptop. Sarah steadied the chair against the wall just out of sight before approaching the booth.

"Hey," she called through the glass, but the guard didn't move. With a frustrated groan, she smacked her hand against the window as hard as she could. " _Hey!_ "

Finally he looked away from his laptop, blinking as he took in the blood that covered the front of her dress. With a sight he leaned over and slid open the window.

"I'm not a cop, lady," he said in a bored tone. "If you need help call 911."

She narrowed her eyes at him as he started to close the window.

"It's not my blood," she snapped. "I need the keys to one of the company cars."

"What?" he scoffed. "And who the hell are you?"

Sarah licked her lips, debating how to make this conversation as short as possible.

"I—I work for Jason," she said finally, instead of giving her name.

"Jason?" he repeated, looking significantly more serious now.

"Yeah...white tie, big smile."

"I know who Jason is," he bristled, before squinting at her doubtfully. "You work for him?"

"Yes. Call him to check if you want," she said tiredly. "He'll love to be bothered after hours."

It couldn't be more clear from his expression that bothering Jason was the last thing the security guard wanted.

"Christ," he muttered, reaching for a set of keys and tossing them to her. "Fine."

She hesitated as she saw the windbreaker draped over the back of his chair.

"I need that, too," she said, nodding to the jacket.

"What? It's mine."

"I'll bring it back to you," she said impatiently as another wave of pain went through her head. With a roll of his eyes the guard grabbed the jacket and held it out through the window for her.

Getting the police officer into the trunk of the company car was a struggle, but his upright position in the chair meant he was already almost level with the trunk, which helped. His limbs flopped lifelessly as she maneuvered him into the small space, almost feeling like she would pass out from the effort. But she couldn't. Not yet.

Once he was inside, she dipped her hand into his jacket and pocketed his burner phone, using the lid of the trunk as cover from any cameras. Impulsively, she grabbed his badge and shoved it into the pocket of the windbreaker as well, not wanting to leave any more identification on him than necessary. Then she slammed the trunk shut, the loud sound making her head ring.

The warehouse Jason wanted her to go to was by the Hudson; she remembered that much as she pulled out of the parking garage. But which way was that? She had lived in this area her whole life, and she couldn't recall which way to turn to get to the waterfront. She turned the wheel to the left, then changed her mind, clumsily turning to the right instead. A car zoomed by her, swerving slightly to avoid clipping her front bumper. The driver honked angrily as he continued on his way.

"Shit. I can't do this." she whispered to herself. "I ca—I can't do this."

Her hand was sweaty on the gearshift as she coaxed the car to the other side of the intersection. A few seconds later, blue and red lights lit up her rearview mirror and her blood froze. _No._ She could not get pulled over with the body of a murdered police officer in her trunk. What if they asked to search the car? She didn't have to let them. Right? Didn't they need a warrant for cars? But this wasn't her car, it was a company car. Did that change the rules? She couldn't recall.

She slowed down and started to pull over to the side of the road, her heart pounding.

The cop veered around her and sped out of sight, towards something more important than a careless driver.

Again, Sarah sent up a silent thank you, though she wasn't sure to whom. Surely no kind of god was on her side in this situation.

Half and hour and several wrong turns later, she stood in the gravel parking lot of the warehouse, the man who she had met last time standing in front of her. She'd been relieved when he'd been the one to answer her buzzing at the gate and not his teenage son.

"What's this about?" he asked, watching her warily.

For some reason, she couldn't stop thinking that she didn't know who he was, didn't know who is family was. Who she was dumping this responsibility on.

"S'your name?" she slurred, before taking a breath and trying again. "What's...what's you're name?

He gave her a strange look before answering reluctantly. "Rob."

Knowing his name didn't make her feel better. Just guiltier. She popped the trunk open before she could think about it anymore.

"Holy shit," Rob said when he saw the bloody body. He quickly backtracked away from the trunk. "Jesus."

Sarah watched him as he recovered from the shock, which quickly seemed to turn to anger.

"No. You guys _promised_ me."

"What?"

"After the last one, I was promised that you guys wouldn't be sending me any more of…these," he said, pointing to the trunk. "I told them that I'll store your weapons and your drugs and whatever the hell else, but people?"

In the back of her mind Sarah wondered who the last one had been, but she couldn't focus enough to really think about it.

"I'm…I'm sorry. I don't…I'm not in charge of these things," she said weakly. It sounded pathetic even to her. If the disgusted look Rob gave her was any indication, he agreed.

Muttering a few more choice curses under his breath, he approached the trunk again, looking down at the body inside.

"Who is he?" he asked after a long silence.

Sarah looked down at the man in the trunk. "He's…he's not anyone anymore."

There was another long pause as the two of them stared at the body.

"I'll…I'll go get a tarp," he said in a resigned tone. She couldn't help but wonder what Orion must be threatening him with that he was willing to do something he so clearly disagreed with. Something just as bad as they threatened her with, she was sure.

Suddenly she remembered the hammer sitting in a trash bag under the front seat of the car.

"D-do you have cameras around here?" she asked Rob as he started to walk away.

"No. Never needed 'em. This was an upstanding business at one point, you know."

Sarah ducked back into the car and grabbed the bag with the hammer. She walked around the building until she came to the back side, where it led out to a shadowy shipping dock. The wood creaked as she went as far out on the dock as she dared, not entirely trusting her balance.

She quickly wiped the handle of the hammer with her dress before throwing it into the water. The heavy weight sank immediately. She reached into her pocket and withdrew McDermott's badge, weighing it in her hand for a second as something in her chest tightened. Then she flung it out as far as she could, watching it spin through the air and wondering how many other dark and guilty things it was joining at the bottom of the river.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

The first thing Sarah did when she got home—after stuffing her bloody clothing into a trash bag and hiding it in the closet to be dealt with later—was to take a shower, as hot as she could stand it until her skin no longer felt like it was covered in a dead man's blood. Afterwards, in the living room, she was hit with a dizzy spell and leaned against the wall for support. Her shoulder knocked hard into a small shelf on her wall that was covered with decorative trinkets, including several colorful bottles of perfume that she never wore but had thought were pretty enough to display anyway.

Sarah cursed as the shelf tilted and the small trinkets and perfume bottles shattered across the floor, immediately flooding the air with several thick, competing scents: light florals mixed with heavy musks, all sweet and strong and overbearing. The smell tugged at the nausea that still sat low in her stomach, and she stumbled over to open the window before returning to clean up the broken glass.

She had just gotten done soaking up the perfume with a towel when a familiar sound on her fire escape made to lift her head up. Her heart skipped nervously as she tried to figure out how she was going to tell him about what had happened. Matt, hit by an overwhelming wave of perfume, didn't seem to notice.

"What is that?"

The cloying mixture of fragrances was giving her a headache—or, rather, making the one she currently had even worse—so she couldn't imagine how bad it must be for Matt's insane senses.

"Broke some perfume bottles," she mumbled, looking down at the shards covering the floor. It suddenly seemed like so much to clean up, and she debated whether it was even worth it. Considering how much danger lingered in every corner of her life, how much did it really matter if there was broken glass on the floor?

"Hey. Are you okay?"

Sarah realized abruptly that Matt had been talking to her and she hadn't been responding. She forced herself to focus.

"Sorry, I—yeah. I'm just tired. Stressed," she mumbled. Matt looked unconvinced, so she abruptly continued. "Um, I—I think I found out who the new big boss is that's running Orion."

Matt blinked in surprise. He leaned back against the low windowsill, tilting his head intently.

"Seriously? That's great. Who is he?"

"She," Sarah corrected him. She thought about standing, but even shifting slightly made her feel dizzy—maybe from inhaling so much perfume—so instead she just gingerly leaned back against the chair behind her. "It's a woman named Vanessa."

The moment the name left her lips, Matt's relaxed demeanor changed completely.

"Vanessa?" he repeated sharply. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah…why?"

Matt swore softly under his breath. "What was her last name?"

"I—I don't think she told me," Sarah said uncertainly, straining her hazy memory. Had she? No. Definitely not. "Just Vanessa."

"What was she like? Describe her," he ordered, sounding not unlike he had when they first met.

Even in her fuzzy mental state Sarah couldn't help but notice that the restless drumming of his fingers, tapping against the wooden windowsill where his hands rested on either side of his legs. Who could this woman possibly be that Matt was so agitated just hearing about her? She concentrated as much as she could on remembering what she could from the lunch.

"Well, she was…pretty and she had dark hair," Sarah began, before realizing belatedly that he probably hadn't meant a physical description. "Um…she had an accent. Like, Israeli, maybe? It was hard to…hard to tell."

It was a poor description, but it was all she could think of. There had to be something else significant about her, but she just couldn't recall.

Matt had pushed himself off the windowsill as she talked and was now pacing around the room. Sarah watched him for a few seconds before his edgy movements began to make her dizzy, and she looked back down at the broken glass.

"I'm guessing she's not a friend of yours," she surmised.

"It's not her specifically that's the problem. I've only met her once, as Vanessa Marianna. Although by this point I'm sure she's Vanessa Fisk," he bit the last name out as though it tasted bad in his mouth.

" _Fisk?_ " Now Sarah was the one to sound dumbfounded. She had figured that the woman had some connection to Fisk if she was in charge of his assets, but she had assumed it was just a business relationship. There had been company gossip for a while about Fisk having a girlfriend, but everyone had been so afraid to talk about him that nothing solid ever came up.

"She didn't mention him?" Matt asked, only seeming to be halfway paying attention to her. The rest of his focus was somewhere deep in his own thoughts. "Anything about trying to get him out of prison? Or him giving orders from inside?"

"No. She just…talked about getting the company back in order. Jason wants her to give it to him."

"Anything else?"

Sarah bit her lip. She knew she should tell him—she should have told him as soon as it happened. But she couldn't help but wonder how he would react. Would he be as disgusted as the warehouse owner and his son? Would he start seeing her as just another Orion lackey again? Matt didn't kill people, and he generally held others to the same standard. Where did hiding a murdered body fall on his moral scale? Above or below torture? What about the fact that he was only dead in the first place because of information _she_ had willingly given to Jason?

"No," she lied after a beat. "That's everything."

Maybe it was the disconnect between her head and her body, or maybe Matt just wasn't listening closely enough. Either way, her lie appeared to go undetected.

"Alright. I need to go," he said. "There's a few of Fisk's associates still floating around out there. I think I can track a few down."

Sarah nodded. As Matt slipped through her window and back onto the fire escape, she couldn't figure out if she was relieved or disappointed that he hadn't picked up on her lie. Part of her was tempted to call him back in and tell him everything, to grab onto that sense of peace she was sometimes able to find with him and use it to block out the clutter in her head. But she just couldn't bring herself to do it.

"Sarah," he said from across the room, and she looked up to see him leaning back in.

"Yeah?"

"Make sure you lock this," he said, tapping the window.

Sarah smiled weakly at the well-worn reminder, and then he was gone.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

She called out of work the next morning.

When she woke up, her head pounded even louder than before, and her dizziness and nausea hadn't passed. After ten minutes of staring blankly at her cell phone's screen and trying to recall her passcode to unlock it—how could she have possibly forgotten something she used dozens of times every single day?—she dialed his number.

He was chipper on the phone—apparently murder put him in a good mood—and as she had suspected, he had already watched the tapes. As such, he was well aware of the blow she had taken to the head. After cheerfully informing her of what a spectacular job he thought she'd done, he'd told her to take the day to recover before she had even brought it up. The entire conversation was strangely upbeat on his part, and she almost felt like it was a trap. Either way, she accepted the offer and took the day off.

She checked the time and saw she had roughly eight hours until the baby shower that night. It had originally been scheduled for a weekend morning at Sarah's place, but due to the constant rescheduling and the questionable safety of the location, they were now having it that evening at Lauren's own apartment. Meaning Sarah had only a few hours until she had to get to Lauren's to set up, and she wanted nothing more than to spend that time sleeping.

The eight hours passed quickly, and the next thing she knew Sarah was standing in Lauren's kitchen by herself, realizing with a sinking sensation that at some point in the last year she had lost the ability to interact with normal people.

Just over forty people ended up coming, some of whom Sarah was familiar with and others whose faces she could vaguely place but not match with a name. With each person who walked though the door, Lauren's apartment became louder and hotter and somehow brighter. She couldn't track conversations beyond a few minutes, and after so long of not having seen anyone she had to answer endless repetitions of the same questions that somehow felt oddly intrusive now.

"Where have you been lately?" _Very busy with a new job._

"What happened to your face?" _I hit it on a taxi door while getting out._

"Are you dating anyone?" _I'm really focused on my career right now._

So here she was, half an hour into the party, hiding in the kitchen as she steeled herself to go back into the room full of too-loud noises and too-fast talking.

"Why isn't your mother here, Lauren?" she heard someone ask, their voice muffled by the kitchen door as they passed by.

"Ugh, she missed her flight back from vacation in St. Barts, so she couldn't make it," she heard Lauren's voice reply. "Thank Jesus, right? She already gave me a whole lecture about how it's bad luck to have a baby shower in your own home, and how it's weird to have one at night, and it's inappropriate to have a coed invite list, blah blah..."

Their voices faded as they moved down the hallway.

Sarah reached into her purse to check her phone, but she instead felt her fingers curl around a small plastic bottle. She pulled it out and recognized it as the prescription Claire had given her. The nurse had been vague about what they did, but Sarah remembered her promising that it would calm her down and help with nightmares.

Sarah squinted at the directions on the bottle, but the small print swam in front of her eyes. Oddly, whatever part of her brain that would normally care about these things didn't seem to be speaking up. She popped two of the small white pills into her mouth and washed them down with water before wandering back out into the crowd.

The effects of the pills worked quickly to help to dull the edge of the party—as did the strong mimosas, of which she was on her second. Or was it third? Nursing the drink, she found a comfortable spot in the living room, distantly listening to the people around her discuss a television show she hadn't been keeping up with. She zoned out, thinking of nothing in particular.

"—and you still live in Hell's Kitchen too, right Sarah?"

Sarah blinked and broke out of her daze when she realized one of the guests—Brendan, maybe?—was addressing her. "What? Uh, yeah. Yeah, I do."

"So, have you seen him?" he asked, leaning forward interestedly.

She hadn't been listening when the topic of conversation had shifted.

"…sorry, who?"

"The Devil."

Her shoulders tensed, and she had to remind herself that this was a friend of Lauren's asking, and not a suspicious Orion lackey. She looked around to see that the other six or seven people sitting around the coffee table were now looking at her with interest, waiting for her answer.

"No…I haven't. Just on the news," she lied weakly.

"Oh," he said, sitting back and looking mildly disappointed. "I figured you had probably seen him around doing backflips off rooftops or whatever."

"They were talking about him on _Trish Talk_ the other day," one of Lauren's old sorority sisters said. "About whether he's one of the good guys or the bad guys. Personally, I don't care. All I know is he is _pretty_."

"How do you even know?" Brendon argued. "You can't see half of his face."

"Who cares about his face? Have you seen the rest of him?" the sorority sister asked, then after a long sip of her drink she informed them, "One of the local news sites got a perfect angle on his ass one time. I took a screenshot and had it as my phone background for a while."

Sarah very nearly choked on her drink. She really hadn't expected the conversation to take this kind of turn.

"Do you think the people he ties up for the police ever get, like, really into it?" Brendan asked mischievously. "Because I'd be like, turn me in, just let me touch your abs first."

Maybe it was the mimosas, but Sarah couldn't help but laugh at how surreal this conversation felt.

"Well, pretty or not, I think he should be in prison," someone chimed in coolly, putting a damper on the laughter that had followed the previous comment.

Sarah glanced over to see that it was one of Lauren's cousins, a woman who was very possibly named Cecilia, if her flickering memory was correct.

"Really?" she asked before she could stop herself. _Do not start talking about this, Sarah._

"Absolutely. The law is the law. And the police should be enforcing it, not some lunatic in a mask."

"He's…not a lunatic," Sarah said quietly.

"How do you know?" Cecilia asked. "People make him out to be this big hero, but it seems to me that he's just a thug who wants to hit people he doesn't like and then be applauded for it. He's not contributing anything useful, he's just creating chaos."

"That seems harsh," Brendan argued. "They just interviewed a girl on the news who said that Daredevil saved her a few days ago."

"Oh, I saw that. Did you notice how she danced around the fact that she's a prostitute, and she got attacked on the job?" Cecilia asked scornfully. "That's exactly my point. Look at who the masked man allies himself with versus who he attacks. He beats up hardworking, law-abiding police officers and business owners, but he'll go out of his way to save a hooker who will probably overdose on drugs next week anyway."

Sarah remembered Matt talking about the girl Brendan had mentioned. The way his jaw had ticked when he'd talked about how she had been maybe fifteen or sixteen at the oldest, about how she'd cried when she'd told him her parents lived five states away and she was afraid they wouldn't want her to come back home.

"S'what, you don't like him because you think the people he saves don't...deserve it?" Sarah hadn't meant for the words to come out of her mouth, and especially not as forcefully as they had, but there they were.

"Mostly I don't like him because he's a violent criminal who acts like he's above other violent criminals. But I do have to wonder how many of the people he helps got themselves into those situations," she said with a shrug. "You do stupid things, there are consequences."

"It's not that simple."

"I think it really is." Cecilia took a sip from her mimosa. "Sorry, not sorry."

Her sing-songy tone made Sarah grip her glass harder.

_Like this spoiled brat has never done anything wrong in her life,_ she thought resentfully.

The conversation went oddly quiet, and when she looked up everyone was looking at her in varying degrees of surprise. Her eyes widened as she realized that she must have said that particular thought out loud. She was about to apologize when Cecilia leaned over and stage whispered to her loud enough for everyone to hear.

"Maybe you've had enough, sweetie," she said, reaching out to take Sarah's drink from her. "You're starting to slur your words. Sloppy isn't a good look on you."

Sarah was so, so incredibly tired of being talked down to all the time.

Forgetting the apology that had been on the tip of her tongue, she moved her glass away from Cecilia's reaching hand and pointedly downed the entire thing in one go. Then, just for good measure, she reached over and plucked Cecilia's drink from her hand, draining that as well before handing the empty glass back to her.

"Maybe you should drink more," she said with a shrug before walking away, the sudden rush of alcohol to her head making her stumble as she pushed through the kitchen door.

Once she was safely alone in the kitchen, Sarah leaned over the kitchen sink to try to gather herself. She was only there for a minute before she heard the kitchen door swing open and Lauren's voice behind her.

"What was _that_?"

"I'm sorry. I don't know," Sarah said, very aware of the slight slur in her voice now that Cecilia had pointed it out. "It was super dramatic. And also, like, unsanitary. I don't—I don't know why I did that."

"What's with you tonight?" Lauren asked, sounding more concerned than angry. "You're like the 'Before' scene in a Snickers commercial right now."

"I don't know. I'm sorry."

"Don't get me wrong, you know I love Sassy Sarah, and Cecilia is a total bitch. I only invited her because my mom insisted. But you seem super miserable out there."

"No, no," Sarah protested. "I'm having fun."

"Yeah?" Lauren asked skeptically.

"Yes, definitely. It's just…they're just talking about a lot of things that I haven't really…kept up with, I guess. TV shows, and current events, and…" _Life in general_. All of these people, some of whom she had cared about at some point—some of whom she had never cared for much at all—and she couldn't connect with any of them anymore.

"Yeah. No, that makes sense. I mean, you have this whole other life now of…fighting crime and corporate espionage and whatever else," Lauren said with a sad smile. "It makes sense that you wouldn't have time for the stupid stuff anymore."

"This isn't stupid," Sarah insisted.

Lauren let out a long, exasperated sigh.

"Listen, If you don't want to tell me what's going on, that's fine, but…you are _not_ okay. What can I do? Do you want me to try to call your…friend-not-a-friend?" she raised her eyebrows at her with a significant look. "Devil Emoji?"

"No," Sarah said immediately, her voice louder than she'd intended. This party, this one tiny sliver of her life, had nothing to do with Orion or Matt or criminal empires. And she could handle it on her own. Besides, he had more important, Fisk-related thing to attend to. "N-no, don't call him."

Lauren looked slightly taken aback by the forcefulness in her friend's voice, her eyebrows knitting together warily, but Sarah didn't notice. "Okay. Okay, we won't call him."

"I just…my head. My head hurts. I think I just need a few moments alone is all."

"Like, alone alone, or do you want some company?" Lauren asked, then motioned to the large cake on the table with a serious expression. "Because we can literally take that entire cake with us."

Sarah laughed despite the fact that her head was splitting open. "No. You have a...a million guests in there, you freak. I'll be fine. Gimme ten minutes and then, um…then we'll s-start opening your gifts, alright?"

It felt very difficult to push the words out around her heavy tongue.

"Okay," Lauren said hesitantly. "You sure?"

" _Yes_ ," she said emphatically, pushing her friend towards the kitchen door. Once Lauren had rejoined the party, Sarah slipped down the hallway to seek out the peaceful quiet of the nursery, which was empty of people. "M'sure."

The room swayed slightly as she entered. The decorations were all done, and many of the things that Lauren should have gotten at her baby shower had already been purchased. The baby was due so soon; Sarah shouldn't have pushed the shower back so many times. She took a seat in the large bay window, enjoying the cool feel of the window pane against her hot skin as she leaned back against it.

She gazed up at the brightly colored fish and other sea life that adorned the walls above her and noted distantly that it looked like they were actually moving. That didn't seem right.

The actual moment Sarah passed out was, to her eternal relief, not particularly dramatic. She simply put her head down on her bent knees to try to stop everything from spinning. And she didn't pick it back up again.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

Matt had put on the mask earlier than usual that night, eager to continue tracking down some of Fisk's old associates. He had just landed on the roof of a motel where he suspected one of the men on his list was staying when Claire called him. It was unusual—he was almost always the one to call her.

"Claire?" he answered, slightly out of breath. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," she answered, sounding tired as usual. She worked too hard, and he knew dealing with him didn't help. "I'm at work. Your friend is here."

Matt knitted his brow in alarm. "Foggy?"

"No. Foggy strikes me as smart enough to not end up in my hospital. I'm talking about Sarah. A friend of hers brought her in a little while ago."

"What do you—she's in the hospital?" he asked sharply. "Put her on the phone."

"I can't, Matt," Claire said, and something about her tone made his stomach drop as his mind unwillingly raced through several awful scenarios. Someone at Orion had caught her. Jason had figured out what she was up to. Or _Ronan_ —Matt closed his eyes, praying that whatever happened, it hadn't been Ronan.

"Why not?"

"She's unconscious. Some sort of head injury. I ran a few tests and I think she's alright, but listen—there's a police officer down the hall, and I heard him talking about her on his cell phone. I think his nametag said Officer Donovan," Claire continued, her voice hushed now. Donovan—Matt immediately recognized the name as McDermott's obnoxious partner. "He was telling someone where she was. I don't know what you guys are mixed up in, but I think you need to get down here."

Luckily, Matt was only about three blocks from the hospital.

"What's the room number?"

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

"A hammer? Are you sure?"

"She only woke up for a minute or so, and she wasn't making much sense. But that's what she said when I asked her what she got hit with."

Matt and Claire were standing at the foot of Sarah's hospital bed a few minutes after their phone call. Sarah's room looked out over the gravel roof of the hospital's cafeteria, so it had been easy to access it through the window Claire had left unlocked.

"The concussion by itself isn't as bad as it could be," Claire continued. "Her pupils are the same size, and she's not vomiting. I didn't see any signs of bleeding near her nose or ears."

"If she hit her head yesterday, why is this only just now happening?"

If she got hit yesterday like she'd told Claire, then she had been hurt when he'd visited her last night. But she hadn't told him. And he hadn't noticed. He'd thought it was just the stress and exhaustion getting to her. And then he'd heard Fisk's name and it had been difficult to focus on anything else.

"The brain is complicated thing. Sometimes the effects of a concussion can take a day or two to fully show up. Stress can make it worse, but everything she ingested probably didn't help."

Matt frowned. "Ingested?"

Claire sighed.

"She's been drinking, which is never helpful for head trauma. She also said she took a few of these tonight," she said, holding up what sounded like a small pill bottle. "I gave them to her a while back to help her with her anxiety and her sleeping problems. I didn't think she'd pop a bunch while sporting a concussion. But she did, and the combination of pills, alcohol and a head injury are what landed her here."

Matt knew that Sarah often turned to alcohol when she was stressed, but this seemed extreme even for her.

"What do I need to do once I get her home?" Matt asked, keeping his voice carefully even.

"You wait, mostly. I gave her an IV that should help with the substances in her system, but she'll still probably be pretty disoriented for a while. I don't think she's in any immediate danger healthwise, but she probably shouldn't be left unsupervised until she's able to walk around on her own and hold a coherent conversation."

"But she'll be alright?" he asked quietly.

"Likelihood says yes, she'll be fine. But like I said, Matt…the brain is a complicated thing," Claire told him gently.

The heavy silence that followed her statement was interrupted by the small pager clipped to the waistband of her scrubs. She checked it and sighed. "I have to go. I probably shouldn't be here while you're sneaking patients out of my care anyway."

"Thank you, Claire," he said sincerely. "I'll get her out of here as quickly as I can."

"Yeah, well. Good luck with sneaking her out past her security detail."

Matt tilted his head. "Her what?"

"You know," Claire said, making her way towards the door. "Tall, blonde, very pregnant. I guess seems to know about you, if the painfully transparent excuses she made up for Sarah are any indication. Very obvious, by the way. You need better liars in your friend group."

Matt immediately recognized the description. "Lauren? Where is she?"

"She went looking for something to eat, but she'll probably be coming back soon."

With that, Claire closed the door behind her.

Matt listened closely, pushing his senses out to cover the floor of the hospital—but he only had to reach down the corridor before her heard Lauren's heartbeat coming down the hall.

Matt was used to relying on the darkness to help conceal his face when talking to people as Daredevil. But here in the hospital, the harsh buzz of electricity above gave away that the room was lit by bright florescent lighting. Considering the possibility that Lauren might run into him as Matt Murdock eventually—given her propensity for popping up unannounced—it was too risky to allow her to get that good of a look at his face. Quickly evaluating his options, Matt positioned himself behind the door, where he would be hidden from sight.

The knob turned and Lauren entered the room, leaving the door open behind her. As soon as she was past the threshold, Matt quietly clicked the door closed and swept his hand over the light switch. The buzz of the ceiling lights ceased immediately. There was no way to make the room completely dark—he could hear the hum of the equipment monitors that surely cast a dull blue light around the room—but it was enough to give him some needed coverage.

Caught by surprise, Lauren made a startled noise and spun around to face him. Matt heard her heartbeat take off immediately and he held up his hand up in a non-threatening gesture.

"Don't—" _Don't scream_ , he had been about to say, but he could tell by the way her breathing had changed when she was about to react instinctively—and loudly.

She only managed to scream for a second before he hastily moved forward and covered her mouth with his hand. Matt cursed internally at the thought of how pissed Sarah was going to be when she found out about this. He had been hoping to get through this conversation without having to make any physical contact with her friend, but it wasn't like he could just let her scream and attract people to the room.

"Don't scream," he finished firmly, keeping his voice quiet and trying not to alarm her any more than she already was. "I'm not going to hurt you, Lauren."

Lauren's breathing and heartbeat were still erratic, but she didn't seem like she was going to shout anymore. He warily removed his hand from her mouth and took a step back, but not far enough that he couldn't reach her again if need be.

"Holy shit. You're Daredevil," she whispered the moment he removed his hand. She didn't wait for him to answer before she continued, stumbling over her words. "Holy _shit_. Oh, my God. I'm literally having a heart attack. What is wrong with you? Do you always greet people like this the first time you meet them? Or—I mean—second time? Because I guess kind of met you already for like half a second but you were jumping out of a fifth story window—which is _crazy_ , by the way, in case no one told you—but I didn't really _meet_ you and also that so did not do justice to how scary this whole—like—shadowy demon look is—"

Matt was caught off guard by the rush of seemingly endless words coming his way. He was almost tempted to cover Lauren's mouth again, but resisted.

"Stop talking," he interrupted her bluntly, glad that Daredevil wasn't required to show the same social graces Matt Murdock did. "We don't have a lot of time."

"Time…time until what?" she asked him guardedly, her heartbeat finally slowing down to normal. "Why are you here?"

Matt hesitated, knowing this next part wouldn't go over well. "I'm taking her with me. She can't stay here."

There was a long pause during which he could tell Lauren's mouth had fallen open in dramatic surprise. "Are you insane? This is a hospital, this is literally exactly where she needs to stay."

"Sarah told you about some of what's been going on, right?" Matt asked. "Cl—someone who works here heard a cop talking on the phone about the fact that Sarah is here, meaning she's probably going to have company soon. And not the friendly kind."

"I—what?"

"She needs to get out of here. I can take her to my place. She'll be safe there."

" _Your_ place? Oh, no. I don't think so, Leonard," she said, jabbing a finger in his direction. Matt tilted his head just slightly, but there was no time to question it before she pressed on. "She needs to be in a hospital room, not your—your bat cave, or your devil's lair or wherever you go when you aren't bashing heads in."

"I don't live in a _lair_ —" Matt bit his tongue, reminding himself of the time crunch they were on. "I have to move her. Soon, before too many people know she's here."

Lauren bit her thumbnail, and he could almost feel her squinting in the darkness to get a better look at him.

"You think it's that guy? The one who's been following her?" she asked.

Matt's jaw ticked. "Most likely."

"Well, can't you just…" Lauren gestured wildly in what he assumed was meant to mimic violence. "You know? Isn't that your job?"

"Yeah, if we weren't in a crowded hospital full of innocent bystanders," he shot back. "Someone could get hurt. Including Sarah, and including you. Especially with armed police officers on his side."

Both of Lauren's hands automatically came to rest on her stomach when he mentioned her potentially getting hurt, and her fingers tapped nervously.

"Do you think he's the one who did this to her?" she asked quietly, worry replacing the exasperation in her voice.

"Ronan? No."

"How do you know?"

He knew because the first time Ronan attacked Sarah, Matt had been able to smell him on her—all over her skin, on her breath. It had made his skin crawl. But there wasn't a trace of Ronan's particular odor—stale cigarette smoke and cheap rum—anywhere in the sterile hospital room.

"If Ronan had gotten to her…she would look a lot worse," he said finally. It wasn't untrue.

"Well, what if her—her brain starts bleeding, or something?" she asked.

"I'll know if something goes wrong, and I'll get her help."

"How will you know? What are you, a doctor?" Lauren bit out sarcastically, then paused. "Wait, _are_ you a doctor? That's messed up. Don't you guys take an oath?"

"I'm not a doctor," he said. "But I am pretty familiar with concussions."

"I bet you are," Lauren muttered, and Matt waited while she looked from him to Sarah. Suddenly she spoke again. "I offered to call you earlier, when she was acting weird. She really, _really_ didn't want me to. Why?"

That stung more than Matt had expected it to, and he didn't have an answer. He'd thought they'd been moving forward lately, like actual friends. Especially after the fire escape, when he'd opened up to her more than he had in a long time. More than he'd intended to, really. Now he felt foolish, knowing that she was still keeping secrets from him, that she still didn't trust him. Given how they'd started out, maybe she never would.

"I don't know," he said.

"Well, that's really reassuring."

"Listen, I know you're trying to protect her, but I am too—"

" _This_ is your idea of protecting her?" Lauren exclaimed, throwing a frustrated hand in Sarah's direction. He felt a sharp jab of guilt in his chest. "Then what the hell does _not_ protecting her look like? She told me that you were helping keep her safe, but it seems to me like you're doing kind of a shit job at it."

Her voice got steadily louder and more heated as she went on, and Matt prayed no one in the hallway could hear her.

"Want to keep your voice down?" he demanded hotly.

"What if I don't keep my voice down?" she retorted immediately. "If—if I scream, all of those doctors and orderlies and whoever the hell else is out there are all going to come running in here. And they're not going to let you take her out of here."

Matt's jaw clenched as his last shred of patience began to wear away.

"Do you really think that's the best thing for anyone in this room right now?" Matt asked softly, choosing to let her interpret the question whichever way she wanted.

She was silent save for her heart beating madly in her chest.

"Listen to me," he said, taking a slow step closer. "I know you don't trust me. But if she stays in this hospital room, she'll be in danger. You know that. I can keep her safe."

Lauren's shoulders slumped just a fraction, and Matt knew she'd relented, however reluctantly.

"Just…please don't let anything happen to her," she whispered. "She's my best friend."

Matt could hear the strain in her voice, and he felt another tug of guilt. Pressing his lips together, he hesitated, then reached into the zippered pocket on the side of his pants and pulled out his burner phone, which he handed to her.

"Put your number in there, and call your own. If you want to check on her before she wakes up, you can call me. I'll let you know how she is. And as soon as she's awake I'll tell her to call you herself."

Lauren stared down at the burner for a moment before flipping it open. He heard the click of buttons as Lauren programmed her number in, then a muffled buzzing in her purse as she called her own number. She handed the phone back to him.

"You should go home before whoever's coming gets here," he warned her.

Lauren nodded and reached over to push the hair out of Sarah's face. Then she wordlessly left the room, leaving the two of them alone.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

The first few times Sarah woke up that night came in brief, unpleasant bursts of consciousness. Opening her eyes in a hospital room. Lauren and a vaguely familiar nurse worriedly asking her questions. Painfully bright lights that made her squeeze her eyes shut again. Waking up in a dark room with soft sheets under her, her heartbeat skyrocketing as she tried to place where she was. Clumsily lashing out at whoever was leaning over her and hearing a pained hiss as her fingernails made contact with skin. A hand catching both of her wrists and holding them still, then a quiet voice —"Easy, easy. You're alright. It's just me. You're safe."—and someone gently pushing her back against the pillows as her adrenaline drained away.

The next time she opened her eyes, she didn't have the energy to do much besides lay very still and try to reorient herself. The lights were on now, and a small part of her brain vaguely recognized the room, but it didn't seem to want to share that with her at the moment. After a minute, she realized she wasn't alone in the room, and turned her head to the side, noting how heavy it felt. When she saw Matt, her brain finally registered where she was.

Matt had dragged one of the living room chairs into the bedroom, positioning it just inside the doorway. He was sitting with his elbows resting on his knees, holding his burner phone up to his ear as he listened to whoever was talking on the other end. His head turned in Sarah's direction when she shifted.

"I'll call you back," he said to whoever he was talking to, then promptly hung up. She tried to focus on him as he got up from his chair, approaching the bed slowly, as though trying not to startle her.

"Hey," he greeted her in a low, even voice, his head tilted to the side as he observed her. "You…you with me? Do you know where you are?"

"Yeah," Sarah mumbled as she dragged herself very slowly into a sitting position. The movement caused the dimly lit room to spin unpleasantly.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, Matt," she said, pressing the palms of her hands to her eyes. "I don't know that many people with silk sheets."

A glass of water was sitting on the nightstand next to her, and she shakily reached for it—frowning at the sight of dried blood under her nails—as she tried to remember what was going on. The last thing she remembered was being underwater. No, just in a room that looked like it was underwater. Lauren's daughter's room. Lauren's baby shower. _Shit_.

"Where's Lauren?" she asked Matt in alarm. "Is she okay?"

"She's fine," he answered. "She's been worried about you."

It took Sarah a second to realize what he was saying. "You…spoke to her? Where did you…?"

"At the _hospital_ ," Matt said pointedly.

"…the hospital," Sarah repeated, giving him a blank look. What was he talking about?

"Yeah. Where you ended up after getting hit in the head with a hammer, and then following it up with some pills and liquor." His voice was still calm, but there was an odd tightness underneath, and his fingers drummed against the dresser he stood next to. Even with a concussion she could see he was pissed off by the situation.

A blurry memory of bright hospital lights flickered through her head. As relieved as she was to not still be there, she also wasn't sure why she wasn't.

"How did I end up here? I was at Lauren's earlier and then…"

"Earlier? The baby shower was yesterday, Sarah."

"…what?"

"It's Wednesday night."

"I've…been sleeping for a whole day?" she asked blurrily, rubbing her eyes.

"On and off. You've woken up a few times. This is the first time you've been able to speak in anything resembling coherent sentences, though."

Sarah was quiet as she absorbed this new information. When she didn't speak, Matt continued.

"When I came over Monday night…you already had the concussion?"

She hadn't really thought about it like that. Obviously it was a concussion, but at the time all she knew was that her head hurt. It still did. How did the word 'concussion' never even cross her mind? But she didn't know how to explain that to Matt.

"Yeah. I…I guess so."

He nodded, his expression unreadable. "Remember when I asked you if you were alright, and you said you were just tired?"

Sarah just looked at him, a sinking feeling of guilt in her chest.

"Yeah," she whispered.

"Did it occur to you at all that maybe someone with a dangerous stalker shouldn't stay alone in her apartment with a heavy concussion?"

It hadn't. "No. I didn't—I wasn't really—"

"I would have helped, you know," he told her. "Taken you to see Claire, or at least stayed with you. Really, _anything_ would have been more helpful than whatever the hell stunt you pulled at that party."

"Oh, God, the party," she groaned. "I need to apologize to Lauren."

"Tomorrow, maybe. You're out of your mind if you think I'm letting you leave right now."

"You can't just make me stay here, Matt," she snapped.

Matt cocked his head as his eyebrows went up.

"Try me," he said dangerously.

"I can take care of myself—"

"Maybe we'll let the person who doesn't have a severe concussion decide that," he said.

"You're being such a hypocrite," she retorted, her tone surprisingly forceful given how tired she felt.

"A hypocrite?" Matt asked with a bitter almost-laugh. "How so?"

"Getting mad at me for this. You—you do stupid stuff with concussions all the time, you get injured constantly—"

"Yeah, but I don't get drunk and down a bunch of pills afterwards—"

"—it wasn't a bunch of pills, you're exaggerating—"

"I don't care! It landed you in the emergency room, didn't it? What are you _doing_ , Sarah?"

Matt wasn't yelling, exactly, but his voice was loud enough that it was making her head pound even worse than before. She pressed her palms to her eyes to try to stem the pain behind them.

"I don't know, Matt," she snapped. "It's none of your business."

"I think it is. Keeping you safe is part of the agreement that you and I made from the start, Sarah. And you sure as hell aren't safe right now."

"I'll be fine—" she started, but Matt cut her off.

"You know, when you were in the hospital, Claire said she heard Officer Donovan on the phone telling someone where you were. My guess is it was either Ronan or McDermott, and now they know you're injured. Does that sound like it'll lead to great things?"

Sarah closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the headboard and focusing on her breathing for a few seconds.

"It wasn't McDermott," she said dully.

"How do you know?"

She took a deep breath. Matt was already mad at her. Might as well tell him now.

"Because he's dead. Jason killed him," she said. Matt abruptly stopped pacing, but didn't say anything. "Yesterday. No, Monday. I think it was Monday. In—in an empty office on the fourth floor."

"How?" Matt asked her finally, breaking the silence.

"With…with a hammer."

She looked up just in time to see the realization visibly play out across his face as he made the connection.

"You were there," he said slowly.

"Yeah. I…he killed him because of me," she forced out before she could change her mind.

He took a step closer, frowning. "What are you talking about?"

"I told Jason that McDermott was working for Ronan. I—I didn't mean to, I was just angry about my dad, and…I didn't think he would act on it. Not like that."

"Sarah—"

"Jason asked me to take care of the body and I did," she continued, desperate to just get it all out in the open at once. "I—I took him to a warehouse down by the river. And I destroyed his phone, and threw his badge in the water."

"Why didn't you tell me any of this?"

"I don't know. I wanted to, but I just—I thought you'd think I was in too deep with Orion and you'd…"

"I'd what?" Matt asked softly when she didn't continue. "Hurt you? I guess that part's on me, isn't it?" he asked bitterly.

"I thought you'd give up on me," she finished quietly.

He was silent for a long time. "Why would I do that?"

"Why wouldn't you? I told Jason about McDermott, Matt. Now he's dead."

"No," he said immediately. "Jason is a psychopath. He would have found out about McDermott and killed him whether you told him or not."

Talking about what had happened made her head hurt worse than anything else so far. She just wanted to be alone, wanted so desperately to be somewhere else that she didn't even think about where she could go. She flipped the covers off and moved to stand.

"Sarah, don't—"

As soon as she took a step forward, the room tilted violently to the side, and she stumbled forward. A pair of strong hands caught her by both arms, steadying her. Taken off guard by the wave of dizziness that hit her, Sarah dug her fingers into the front of his shirt, still feeling like she was falling despite Matt's steady grip on her arms.

"Hey. I've got you," she heard him say distantly, the anger gone from his voice now.

The spinning room made her head pound even harder, so she closed her eyes and slowly leaned her head against Matt's chest. Suddenly she found herself so drained that she didn't even have the energy to be angry anymore. She couldn't even really remember why she had been angry to begin with. She was just tired, and strangely sad. She tried to pull her arms away from his grip, but didn't particularly have the energy.

Matt's chest moved as he exhaled deeply. He slid his hand up her arm and over her shoulder, gently hooking her hair behind her ear and letting his hand linger there. He maintained a steady hold on her other arm to steady her as he leaned his head down to speak in her ear.

"Sarah, please," he whispered. "Just let me help you."

She simply nodded, and he kept a tight hold on her arms as he helped her back to the bed. Once she was back under the covers, he took a seat on the edge next to her. With a sigh he reached out and brushed the hair out of her face to touch the dark bruise on her forehead. There was a dark frown on his face, but when he spoke his voice was much softer than he had been before.

"Listen. It probably won't shock you to hear that I don't have a lot of friends," he said. "I'd really like to keep the ones I do have in one piece."

Sarah felt a stinging behind her eyes when she realized he was still calling her a friend after everything she had just told him.

"I'm sorry," she began, but Matt shook his head and dropped his hand back down.

"Don't apologize. Just…just tell me. When things get bad like that. Or even when they're not that bad. At least let me try to help."

"What about when everything is bad?" she asked him. "We still have Ronan to deal with, plus Jason is crazy. Now Donovan's going to be suspicious."

"I know. And I don't have a plan right now, but…I'm in your corner. Alright? You didn't kill anyone. Jason did. I know that."

Sarah watched him closely. "I wish I was as certain as you."

Matt sighed. "We can talk about it more tomorrow. You need to sleep and I have to go get changed."

"Changed?"

"Yeah. I have to go out tonight for a little while. I was going to look for some of Fisk's old friends, but now I might check out what's going on with the police instead."

"Oh," she said, surprised and a little disappointed that he wasn't going to stick around now that she was awake.

"I'm just waiting for the next shift to arrive," he said. As though he could sense her confusion, he added, "You didn't think I was just going to leave you by yourself, did you?"

Perfectly timed, a knock came at the front door.

"You…got me a babysitter?" Sarah asked Matt confusedly as he stood up.

"Something like that," he said over his shoulder before disappearing.

Sarah heard him quietly conversing with someone as he let them in, and she recognized the familiar voice even before the blond lawyer came into the room.

"You know, it seems like I never see you unless you're injured or mixed up with the law. You don't call, you don't write…" Foggy dropped down heavily onto the foot of the bed, and the sudden movement of the mattress made her head jolt painfully. "I'm considering asking for my friendship bracelet back."

"Hi, Foggy," Sarah greeted the blond lawyer.

"Hi." He set down the duffle bag and coffee cup he had been carrying. "Heard you got hit in the head with a hammer."

"Yeah."

"You should try not to do that."

"Good idea."

Matt returned to the room with his black outfit on and his mask in hand and addressed Foggy first. "Don't let her leave that bed. She'll probably try."

"I'm right here," she protested. "I can hear you."

He ignored her. "Make sure she gets some sleep."

"Well I could always preach to her about Thurgood Marshall for a while," Foggy said innocently. "I'm sure she'll fall asleep immediately."

Matt's lips twitched and he just shook his head before turning to Sarah. "Try to get some rest. Call me if you need anything. Drink lots of water."

Sarah caught Foggy's eye and he mouthed the words _Bossy Doctor Matt_ to her. She bit back a laugh as Matt frowned suspiciously.

"I will," she told him. "Be careful beating people up."

"I'm always careful," he said lightly, and she rolled her eyes as he left. She and Foggy both listened for the sound of the rooftop door closing.

"Well, I come bearing entertainment. Specifically, the newest season of the best Spanish soap opera television has ever seen," Foggy said, hopping up and crossing the room to grab the armchair, which he dragged closer to the bed. "I had to illegally download it from a very questionable website, and it has Korean subtitles, but it'll do the trick."

"Sounds good to me," she said as he settled into the chair next to her, opening his laptop on the bed between them.

"Déjà vu, huh?" he asked. "First Matt's laid out with a concussion, now you are. It's not a great pattern, to be honest."

"I guess it's your turn next."

"Pass. I prefer to fight crime in the courtroom, where there are no hammers and very little chance of getting knocked unconscious."

"There are too hammers in courtrooms," Sarah argued, making a vague swinging motion with her hand. "Judges use 'em."

"That's a gavel, and I don't think they use those anymore."

"That's not what _Law and Order_ tells me," she said with a shrug. She could hear the slur in her words but couldn't control it.

"Well, regardless of the authenticity of a scripted television show, gavels only weigh a few ounces, so I'm not worried," Foggy informed her. "Why are you threatening me with gavel injuries, anyway? Does Matt know that you're this mean when you're concussed?

Sarah laughed, opening her eyes again. "It's not a threat. And Matt's already pissed off at me, don't go telling him I'm threatening his best friend, too."

"He's not pissed off at you, he's just…worried. And guilty. And he expresses that concern through, you know…anger and mild violence."

"That's how he expresses every emotion, I'm pretty sure. And anyway, what does he have to feel guilty about?"

Foggy shrugged. "He thinks every bad thing that happens to his friends is because of him."

Sarah felt oddly offended by the insinuation. "Whoa. Hang on. Orion is a dangerous place. I have my own bad things. I don't just get…Matt's leftover bad things."

Foggy seemed amused by her indignation. "You guys are a lot alike, you know. I didn't see it before, but I'm starting to see it now."

"Is it the concussion?" she asked knowingly.

He snorted. "Partially. I think you might be the only person who rivals Matt in terms of making Claire want to pull her hair out over your personal safety decisions."

_Claire_. She didn't even remember talking to the nurse, or being in the hospital at all. Having no recollection of what she'd said or done made her feel vaguely nauseous; though that might also be the concussion.

Thinking about that made her head pound, and she tried to focus on the show.

"So, wait," she said slowly after a while of them watching in silence. "That one—Eduardo?—is pretending to be his own twin brother to avoid getting arrested? Doesn't anyone ever wonder why they're never in the same room together? That's ridiculous."

"I think that's what's happening. Karen swears that's what's going on, and I don't speak enough Spanish to challenge her on it."

Sarah blinked slowly, furrowing her brow. _Karen_. Why did that name sound familiar? She tried to remember, but it just made her headache increase. _Probably just heard Matt or Foggy talking about her at some point._

She shifted slightly, trying to get more comfortable in the party clothes she was still wearing.

Foggy glanced over at her, noticing her strained movements, then winced and slapped his forehead dramatically. "I'm sorry. You probably want something else to wear."

"This isn't very comfortable," she admitted, waving a hand at the skirt and blouse she was wearing. "I put it on for a party, but it's, um…not great for relaxing."

Foggy hopped up and went to Matt's dresser, pulling a couple of drawers open and digging through them.

"I'm not sure Matt wants me wearing his stuff," she said hesitantly.

"It's fine. He won't care," Foggy said, still rummaging through the drawers. "I mean, it's a loan, not a permanent gift. Not like, say…sweatshirts."

She squinted at him, suspicious of his exceedingly nonchalant tone, but he simply gave her an innocent look as he handed her a dark gray t-shirt that was soft and well-worn, along with a pair of sweat shorts.

"Thanks," she said, accepting the clothes.

"The shorts have a drawstring on them that might help them fit you better. It's about the best I can do," he said apologetically.

Sarah was dismayed to find that just the walk from the bedroom to the bathroom made her a little tired. Closing the bathroom door behind her, she unzipped her highwaisted skirt and let it flutter softly to the cold tile floor, quickly followed by her blouse, then her camisole and bra. Matt's t-shirt, clearly well-worn, was soft against her skin as she pulled it over her head. His shorts were entirely too large for her, and hung low on her hips even when she pulled the drawstring tight. Despite the size difference, the clothes were a world more comfortable than what she had been wearing before, and she felt a rush of gratitude towards Foggy for being so perceptive.

Foggy was back in the chair when she returned to the room. "Better?"

"Yeah. Thank you," she said, slipping back into the covers.

"I'm sure Matt would have offered you the clothes himself, but he was a little…preoccupied."

"He was a little pissed off, you mean."

Foggy conceded with a nod. "That, too. But you know he's coming from a good place. Matt can be kind of…I don't know if possessive is the right word, but I can't think of another one. And I don't mean it in a bad way, necessarily."

Sarah was having difficulty tracking Foggy's conversational shifts. "How do you mean, then?"

"I mean…take a look at this whole Daredevil shtick he does. 'I have to protect my city,'" Foggy imitated in a low, gravely voice. "How many people do you know who take where they live that personally? And then when it comes to his actual friends—that's another level altogether. Matt'll do…just about anything for the ones he sees as his to protect. It's a short list of people." He gave her a meaningful look. "…you know?"

Sarah bit her lip as she stared at him, feeling like he was having two different conversations with her right now, and she wasn't understanding either one.

"…yes?" she said unconvincingly.

Foggy just shook his head and sighed, then nodded towards the laptop. "Alright. Enough heart-to-hearts while your head is broken. We're missing important plot here."

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

She drifted off in the middle of the third episode of the soap opera, but woke up when she heard quiet voices talking somewhere nearby.

"—two o'clock in the morning, Foggy, how can you possibly be hungry—"

"—I'm a growing man, Matt, I need sustenance—"

They both stopped bickering when she slowly sat up.

"Morning, sunshine," Foggy greeted her cheerfully. "Since you're awake, let me ask your personal opinion on whether one can really consider himself an adult if he doesn't keep any food in his kitchen—"

Matt groaned.

"There's leftover Thai food in the fridge," he conceded, jerking his head towards the kitchen. "Knock yourself out."

"Fantastic. Do you—" Foggy pointed to Sarah, about to offer her some food as well, but the look on her face must have betrayed the way her stomach flipped unpleasantly at the mere thought of food. "—nope. You don't. Alright, then."

With that Foggy left in search of said food, and Sarah was alone with Matt.

"How's your head?" he asked after a few moments.

Sarah started to reply with an automatic _It's fine_ , but she snapped her mouth shut as she reconsidered. Everything Matt had done for her tonight, and all he'd asked was that she be honest with him. She could do that.

"It still hurts," she said truthfully. "But not as much as before. I can think a little more clearly if I'm not…thinking too hard. If that makes sense."

Matt nodded. Of course it would make sense to him; she wondered how many concussions he had gotten since he started his nightly activities.

He took a seat on the edge of the bed next to her and reached out, gently tilting her chin to the side so that the bruised side of her face was towards him. He moved his hand up to her temple, lightly touching the raised bump. As he brought his hand away she could that his knuckles were freshly red and raw.

"The swelling is going down. That's good." Matt suddenly cocked his head, his blank eyes flicking down. "You're wearing my clothes."

Sarah touched the hem of the soft t-shirt she was wearing, then looked back up at Matt tentatively, not sure how to read his reaction. Maybe he was picky about his clothing? She supposed she would be too if she could pick up on other people's scents like he could.

"Yeah. Sorry. Um, Foggy said you wouldn't mind. But I can take them off if you want." She realized what she had just said when she saw Matt's eyebrows go up just a fraction, and she quickly corrected herself. "I mean that I—I can change back into my own clothing."

Matt cleared his throat and shook his head. "No, no, of course not. I should have offered you something else to wear to begin with. Sorry about that."

"No, it's fine. I'll probably have to change back before I go home tomorrow, though," she pointed out.

Matt let out a long breath, casting his eyes up to the ceiling.

"Or…you could just stay here."

"We've already had this talk, Matt," she said tiredly.

"Yeah, and now we're having it again."

Not wanting to have another fight, she bit back a sigh. "Let me think about it, okay? Once I can actually think."

He gave her a doubtful look. "Alright."

With a start, she suddenly noticed the deep scratches on the side of his neck. Slowly she reached out and traced the jagged lines, remembering the blood she had found under her nails earlier. Matt went very still as her fingers brushed against his skin.

"Are these from me?" she asked softly, though she already knew they were.

"They're just scratches," Matt dismissed her, before flashing a small, crooked grin. "Luckily, there were no household objects within reach."

Sarah was caught between a laugh and a wince as her fingertips lingered on the ugly marks. "I'm sorry."

Under the scratches she could feel his pulse. He lifted his hand up as though to pull hers away, but hesitated. Then he curled his fingers around her wrist, running the calloused pad of his thumb against back of her hand while the rest of his fingers ghosted lightly over the tendons on the inside of her wrist.

There came the sound of a throat being cleared across the room, and Sarah looked up to see Foggy standing in the doorway, watching them with raised eyebrows. Matt's hand disappeared from her wrist and she let her own fingers fall from his neck as he exhaled deeply, standing up from the bed.

"Sorry to interrupt this very normal conversation, but I just need to grab my things," Foggy said, still leaning against the doorway and looking vaguely amused.

"I'll let you get some sleep," Matt said to her firmly, very purposefully ignoring the other lawyer. Sarah couldn't tell if they were being weird, or if she was still just out of it.

As Matt passed by Foggy on his way out of the room, she thought she heard the blond man mutter, _"Exhibit number four,"_ but that didn't make any sense, nor would it warrant the dirty look Matt gave him. She must have heard him wrong.

"Are you going home?" Sarah said.

"Uh, yeah. All this dark stuff outside?" Foggy said, motioning towards the window. "They call this nighttime. Sometimes people use it as an opportunity to sleep."

"Thanks for coming over."

"Anytime. Feel better, alright? Don't let Doctor Matt boss you around too much."

Matt said something in retort from the other room, but she couldn't hear what it was. Foggy just laughed and sent her a wink before sliding the door closed behind him.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

Some nights, Matt could come home from fighting and fall asleep immediately, his bruised and aching limbs welcoming the chance to rest. Other nights, the adrenaline continued surging through him long after he got home, keeping him awake despite his exhaustion. Tonight was very much the latter.

Two hours after Sarah had fallen back asleep and Foggy had left the apartment, Matt was still awake. He was sitting on the couch in sweatpants and a t-shirt, his laptop open on the coffee table in front of him. Figuring that he might as well do something worthwhile with his bout of insomnia, he'd pulled up some of the research for work that he really should have read earlier that week.

Matt ran his fingers over the refreshable Braille display hooked to his laptop, so intent on the document he was reading that he didn't hear Sarah getting out of bed, but he lifted his head up from his work when he heard her slide the bedroom door open. He frowned and hooked his finger around the cord of his earbud, plucking it out of his ear.

"Hey," he said. "What are you doing up?"

There was a soft clinking noise as she tapped her fingernail against the glass in her hand. "Water refill."

"I can get it," he offered automatically, but the hardwood floor was already creaking as her bare feet crossed the living room to the kitchen. Matt could tell from her gait that she was watching her steps more carefully than usual, but her balance seemed to have mostly returned to her.

"It's okay. I think I remember the concept," she said lightly, turning on the faucet to fill up her glass. "Do you always do paperwork at four in the morning?"

Matt heaved a sigh, shaking his head. "No. But…it can be hard sometimes to go to sleep right when I get home. Too wired. I figured I'd get some work done while I wait for it to die down," Matt said.

Sarah slowly padded over to where he was sitting, and he felt a weight on the other end of the couch as she curled up in the opposite corner with her glass of water, facing him. "So, you really don't ever sleep, then."

He shot her a disapproving look before turning back to his laptop. "Like you should be doing? Go back to bed."

"I'm on a couch," she protested. "That's basically a bed. Besides, I was bored."

Matt's shook his head. "Well, it's boring out here, too. Just jurisdictional contracts."

"I love…jurisdictional contracts," Sarah said, the faint remains of a slur lingering in her voice.

"Your head injury doesn't make your lies any more convincing, you know."

"I promise not to interrupt your boring legal paperwork, counselor." She shifted farther down in her seat to get more comfortable, stretching her legs out so that she took up both of the couch cushions he wasn't occupying.

"Sure," he said doubtfully.

"You won't even know I'm here. Wearing your clothes is basically like camouflage, right?"

Matt smiled slightly at the hint of a teasing tone beneath the exhaustion in her voice, relieved to hear her familiar sense of humor flickering back.

He didn't mention that her wearing his clothing was the opposite of camouflage. That to the contrary, the combination of her scent surrounded by his clothing was just about the most distracting thing he could think of right now.

Pushing the thought away, he tried to focus on the website he was browsing, concentrating on the small bumps that raised against his fingers as the Braille display refreshed itself with each sentence. True to her word, Sarah didn't interrupt, instead leaning her head to the side to rest it against the back of the couch. She lingered somewhere just short of falling asleep, occasionally stirring to take a sip of water.

Despite her silence, her presence next to him was distractingly loud in all kinds of ways. That had been happening a lot lately. He'd just become more aware of it since Foggy had barged in with his blunt accusations that morning. The training session hadn't helped matters; nor had the rest of the events of that night.

It also didn't help that, as an unintentional side effect of sharing that bottle of whiskey on the fire escape, Matt was now fully aware of the taste her mouth was leaving on the glass.

"If you fall asleep on the couch, I'm leaving you out here," he threatened when she shifted again to get more comfortable.

"Probably more suited for someone my size than yours," she said, not sounding terribly worried by the possibility.

"Well, I'm sure you can sleep just about anywhere when you're all of five feet," he said, purposefully undershooting on her height. He smirked slightly at the offended huff he earned in response.

"I am almost five foot four, you dick," Sarah muttered sleepily.

"Almost?"

"Five three and three fourths. It counts."

"I haven't heard anyone list their height in quarter inches since middle school," he told her with a grin. "Is that when you stopped growing?"

"Hey, you should watch it. I'm learning how to fight, you know," she told him, stifling a yawn as she spoke. "This guy is teaching me."

Matt laughed and ran a tired hand through his hair, finally giving up on doing any work at all with her in the room. He leaned back against the couch, turning his head in her direction.

"Yeah?" he played along, raising his eyebrows at her. "Is he any good?"

"He's alright, I guess. After another session or two I'll probably be way better than him, though."

Matt snorted. "Yeah, maybe if you can stop getting your ass knocked to the ground."

Any retort she had was lost as she stifled another yawn. He could practically feel the fatigue radiating off her, and he couldn't quite figure out why she was still out here with him.

"Seriously, go back to bed. You need rest."

Sarah was quiet for a beat.

"I don't feel like being alone. It, um…I don't know. Makes my thoughts bounce around everywhere," she said haltingly, her hair brushing against the collar of his t-shirt as she shrugged a shoulder. "I'd rather be out here with you than in there by myself."

Matt understood that feeling well enough. There were times when he was so tired or stressed that he had difficulty keeping his senses from picking up on everything within a mile radius—his brain would jump from scent to scent, sound to sound, leaving no time to focus on anything in particular. It was maddening, and often he had found the best way to make it stop was just to be around Foggy and Karen, listening to them bicker about coffee and sports teams.

He exhaled deeply as he made what was possibly a very questionable decision. Grabbing a folder of yet more paperwork reading he needed to get done from a stack the coffee table, he stood up, extending his hand down towards her.

"Come on," he said quietly, beckoning with his fingers for her to take his hand. "I have a compromise."

Sarah took his hand and he slowly pulled her up from the couch. She still wasn't entirely balanced as she got to her feet, and he put his hand to her waist to steady her. Once she had regained her footing, he let his hand slip from her side, but her fingers curled around his kept their hands intertwined as he led her through the living room.

Matt knew he should probably sit in the chair that Foggy had left next to the bed, but it was late, and he blamed his lack of good judgment on the hour. He pushed up the pillows on the other side of the bed—a good distance from where Sarah was curled up under the sheets—and sat up against them, his legs stretching out on top of the covers as he rested the folder of papers on his lap.

He could feel Sarah's gaze on him as he opened the folder of Braille sheets that detailed the thrilling topic of jurisdictional mandates.

"I'll be awake anyway, so I can stay with you for a while. Don't want you passing out on my living room floor because you're stubborn," he said when he felt her gaze on him. "I do that enough on my own as it is."

Her laugh was quiet and tired, and he could tell she wasn't going to be awake much longer.

"Thanks, Matt," she said softly.

The two of them fell into silence as he began to read and she drifted towards sleep.

After the fifth time he'd run his fingers over the same sentence, Matt had to accept that he wasn't going to get any work done. But he'd known that from the moment he sat down, hadn't he? For the last two days he'd been so distracted with making sure Sarah's head was functioning right that there had been no room for anything else—but now that she was slowly returning to her usual state, so were the thoughts he'd been trying so hard to push away lately. Now was absolutely not the time to be letting his guard down, but the very confusing combination of Sarah's scent surrounded by his clothes and his sheets was making it difficult to concentrate.

Finally he gave up on trying to comprehend what he was reading and leaned his head back against the wall, exhaling and pinching the bridge of his nose tiredly.

She was asleep now; he could tell. The tension slipped from her muscles, and her breathing evened out to a slow, shallow pattern. He knew he should leave—his job was done, she'd gone back to sleep. But he listened to her breathing for a little longer, just a few more minutes. Just to reassure himself that she was alright, that she was safe here next to him, still in one piece.

And so he stayed perfectly still, closing his eyes as he felt his adrenaline high finally start to fade. Uninvited, Foggy's voice came to mind as Matt listened to Sarah's even breathing next to him.

_Exhibit number five, Murdock._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy one year anniversary, y'all.


	23. Observations

### Chapter Twenty-Three: Observations

While Sarah was safely recovering in Matt's apartment, her absence at the hospital hadn't gone unnoticed—and neither had Aaron McDermott's disappearance.

On the top level of a parking garage several blocks away, Ronan stood waiting, smoking a cigarette as McDermott's partner, Officer Connor Donovan, pulled up in an unmarked car.

"You find out where she is?" he asked the police officer without preamble as he got out of the car.

"No," Donovan answered. "Don't know where she went after the hospital, but she hasn't been back to her apartment."

"Well, that's just great detective work, officer. Isn't it your fault she managed to get out of the hospital in the first place?"

"My job was to tell you she was there, not to keep her there until you arrived," Donovan snapped. "Besides, I don't know how she got out of there. She looked half dead when I saw her."

"There's something going on there," Ronan said. "Those two idiots I hired to bring her to me never came back. Now McDermott's gone, and she managed to slip out of that hospital unseen. Sarah isn't smart enough to be doing all this on her own. She's got someone helping her."

"Who do you think it is?"

"Dunno yet."

"Well until you figure it out, we need to be focusing our attention on finding McDermott."

"Aw," Ronan cooed. "Does he mean something special to you? Are the two of you some kind of buddy cop rom-com?"

Donovan didn't take the bait.

"He knows about this arrangement," he said slowly, pointing from himself to Ronan. "And him being missing means the department is going to start looking closer at all of the arrests he and I have been bringing in lately. What if they connect the dots and realize we haven't been finding these guys on our own?"

"Why should I care if that happens?" Ronan asked in a bored tone. "So you'll get outed for being bad at your job."

"Alright, try this instead. What if McDermott skipped town because he decided to tell some of your criminal friends that you're the reason all of their hideouts keep getting busted? That you're ratting them out just so you can keep a tail on some girl?"

Ronan's face twitched into a sneer, but he had no retort.

"It's best for both of us if we find McDermott, and quick," Donovan continued. "So if you think your little girlfriend knows something then let's go to her apartment and make her tell us."

"No."

"Why not?" he demanded. "I know you like playing around with her but I'm not about to risk my job because you want to drag this out—"

"She doesn't react to being attacked. You threaten her and she just stares at you like an idiot," he said bitterly. "If we want her to tell us who she's working with and what she knows about McDermott, we have to get under her skin. And the only thing that ever seems to get a rise out of her is the people she cares about. Mess with them and I'd be willing to be she'll come ot us."

"Fine," Donovan said impatiently. "Her dad, then. We already know where he lives. Who else?"

"There aren't a lot of options. She's not Miss Popular," Ronan said. "But she has a best friend. I don't have a name, but she's in a lot of Sarah's photographs. Tall, blonde. Seems to mean a lot to her."

At the mention of Ronan's collection of Sarah's photographs, Donovan gave him a vaguely disgusted look before rolling his eyes.

"Anyone else?" the officer asked.

Ronan nodded, inhaling from his cigarette before answering.

"I think she's got a new boy toy," he said, his lip curling up in anger. "Another one. She moves on quick. One of the lawyers that showed up when you and McDermott were interrogating her."

"The blind asshole or the asshole who needs a haircut?"

"The blind one."

Donovan scowled. "That guy creeps me out. I think it's the glasses. Can't tell what the hell he's thinking."

"Who cares? Just keep an eye out for either one of them to show up around her, and let me know. We'll figure something out from there."

"I can't follow her twenty-four seven, you know. I do have an actual job."

Ronan tossed the cigarette butt on the ground and stomped it out. "Yeah, well, you won't for much longer if you don't find your partner, right?"

The slamming of Donovan's car door was his only response.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

It didn't take as long this time for Sarah's brain to catch up to where she was. She lay still and took in the high ceilings and the tall, multi-paned window that clouded the weak early morning light. Then her gaze fell to the bed next to her, where she blinked at the sight of Matt still stretched out where he had been when she had fallen asleep, his head leaned back against the wall, his eyes closed and his lips parted slightly. From the uncomfortable way he was still leaning up against the pillows and the sea of Braille papers that had slid off his lap and into the space between them, it looked like he had fallen asleep while doing his paperwork.

Blurrily, Sarah fumbled her hand on the nightstand for her phone to check the time and was immediately greeted with an email from Jason, letting her know that he expected to see her at work today—though for whatever reason he was allowing her to come in at noon and work a half day. His emails and texts were always very short and terse, as though he didn't know how to convey his fake cheerfulness in writing. The summons wasn't a surprise—she was shocked she'd been allowed this much time off at all—but the idea of going back to that building after what had happened there made her stomach turn anyway.

Setting her phone aside, she slowly sat up, biting back a groan as the pain in her skull immediately increased. She ran a hand through her tangled hair and looked over at Matt again. The kind thing to do was probably to wake him up from his uncomfortable sleeping position, but she didn't. Partially because he looked so unbelievably tired that she couldn't bring herself to bother him, but partially because she rarely got the chance to see him unguarded like this, and it was fascinating.

People always looked younger when they were asleep, and Matt was no exception. She remembered how thrown she'd been to find out that he was only two years older than her. It was easy to forget that when she spent so much time with him as Daredevil, but right now she could easily see it. The tightly coiled tension that always lingered just under the surface wasn't there now, and without it he looked very much like the normal lawyer he pretended to be. The only indication that he wasn't was the scattering of injuries he always sported: this time it was a nasty bruise on the inside of his forearm; a small cut that began above his ear and disappeared into his hair; the faint outline of a thick bandage under his t-shirt, wrapping around his side. And, of course, the ever present bruising along his knuckles. It occurred to her as she watched him that for as often as he came to her to get basic first aid, there must be dozens of times that he didn't. She frowned as she thought about him coming home every night and being alone with nothing but a bunch of bruised ribs and old scars. The image bothered her more than she expected.

 _Alright, weirdo,_ she reprimanded herself. _Enough creepily watching people sleep._

Sarah quietly gathered the Braille papers that had spilled out onto the bed and set them on the nightstand next to her. It was cool in the room, and she reached down towards the foot of the bed for the heavy, knitted blanket that Foggy had been adamant about her using (despite her insistence that she had a concussion and not pneumonia). Carefully, she draped it over the sleeping vigilante, hoping it wouldn't wake him up. He didn't stir; apparently he needed the sleep. Sarah watched his chest rise and fall evenly for a moment longer before slipping out of the bed, warily testing her balance as she stood. Her head still ached, but the room stayed in one place as she made her way to the bedroom door, which seemed like a good sign to her.

The image that greeted her in the bathroom mirror was almost comical. The coverup she had so carefully applied for the baby shower had worn away, leaving the vivid bruise on her temple clearly visible again. Her eye makeup had run, resulting in a raccoon-eyed look, and her hair was tangled from sleep. She let out a rueful laugh as she realized that if you left out the important details of whose apartment this was and why she was there, this entire scenario wouldn't look entirely unlike several mornings she'd had in college after a night out.

She turned the faucet on and began trying to get the makeup off of her face before moving on to untangling her hair. Sometime during her stay—she wasn't sure when, since it all blurred together—Matt had procured a toothbrush for her from somewhere in his apartment, still in the package. As she brushed her teeth, she wondered briefly if he kept spare toothbrushes around for the parade of one-night stands that Foggy made it seem like he had. How did that work, anyway? Did no one notice that he was covered in cuts and bruises? When did he have time to meet women when he spent all of his nights beating people up? She shook her head and spit the toothpaste into the sink; this was not an appropriate time to be wondering about Matt Murdock's sex life. Actually, scratch that—there was never an appropriate time to be wondering about Matt Murdock's sex life.

Satisfied that she no longer resembled a celebrity mug shot, Sarah made her way into the kitchen in hopes of locating something caffeinated to drink. The coffee maker took a few minutes to figure out—Matt had opaque Braille labels overlaying the buttons, obscuring the original print—but she finally set it to brew and took a seat at the kitchen table to wait, a glass of water in one hand and a bottle of Aspirin in the other. A little taken aback at how tired she still was, she closed her eyes for a moment and rested her head on her hand.

Now that her mind was a little less clouded, it was also increasingly more apt to dwelling on things she didn't want to think about. As soon as she closed her eyes she was greeted with the image of McDermott slumped in that office chair, and how heavy his body had been as she'd maneuvered it through the building. The logical part of her knew that there was nothing she could have done to prevent Jason from killing him—he had acted so quickly and irrationally, there was no time to react. But it didn't help dispel the echo of the police officer's wet, gasping last breaths from her memory.

She felt a light touch on her shoulder and jerked up with a startled gasp to see Matt crouched next to her chair, his eyebrows knitted together in concern.

"Just me," Matt said, holding his hands up. "I was talking to you for a minute and you weren't responding. You alright?"

"Yeah, I…" Sarah shakily ran a hand through her hair, pushing the thoughts of McDermott out of her mind as her heart rate settled down again. "I…didn't hear you get up."

Matt lowered himself into the chair across from her, rubbing the back of his neck; it looked like she had been right about the uncomfortable position in which he'd fallen asleep. Her gaze lingered on the dark scratches she'd left across his neck, and she winced guiltily—another small injury to add to his collection.

"Did you decide the table seemed like a more comfortable place to sleep?" he asked.

"No. I was waiting for the coffee to brew, and I just…got lost in my thoughts."

"I didn't think you'd be out of bed this early. Or at all, really."

"Well, getting out of bed is a key step towards going to work, I've heard."

She was unsurprised when Matt's mouth twitched downward in displeasure. "I was wondering when they were going to make you come back in."

"I don't have to be there until noon, so…it's not a full work day, at least," she pointed out helpfully.

His frown only deepened, and he shook his head. "I don't like it. You shouldn't be there alone. Not in this condition. Not with him."

"Well, you can't come with me," Sarah said tiredly, resting her head on her hand as she observed him over the table. "It's not 'Bring Your Vigilante To Work Day'."

"I'm glad you think this is funny."

"I don't."

The coffee machine beeped to signal that it was ready. She moved to stand up but Matt shot her a stern look.

"Sit down."

"I can do things like get my own coffee, you know," she told him, but she remained in her chair. "I'm not made of glass."

"Yeah, I've caught on to that," he said as he set the hot mug of coffee in front of her. "How are you feeling?"

She watched the steam rise from the surface of the liquid for a few moments.

"My head feels better," she said finally. "I feel worse."

"Your speech is a definitely better," he noted.

She squinted at him. "Was it that bad before?"

"Pretty slurred. You weren't always making a lot of sense."

"Oh. Good thing I wasn't trying to explain anything important, then," she joked weakly.

Matt's mouth twitched into a grin before he grew serious again, taking a seat across the table from her once more.

"Mind if I ask you some follow up questions about what happened? I think you left out a few major points. Like how you ended up on the business end of a hammer meant for McDermott, for one thing. How you managed to get a full grown man from Orion all the way down to the warehouse on your own, for another."

Slowly, Sarah filled Matt in on everything she could remember from what had happened: Jason's speech about loyalty, and calling McDermott to meet them. Several times she had to backtrack, remembering earlier things she had left out, like Jason and Vanessa talking about the bribe at lunch. She went through Jason's whole speech about names, and Rob's implication that Orion employees had brought him dead bodies before. Trying to remember and explain everything in order was surprisingly exhausting, and it started to show.

"Alright," Matt said as she stumbled over a few words again. "That's…that's good for now."

"Okay," Sarah agreed, relieved to not have to talk about it for a while.

"You need to eat. Do you want me to make you something or do you want to order in?"

Sarah shook her head. The thought of food was still very much unappealing. "Oh, no, I'm…not really hungry."

Matt nodded, taking a drink from his coffee, and for a second she thought that was the end of it.

"Your options include me cooking you something, or getting food delivered," he repeated, setting his mug back down on the table and leaning back in his chair. "But 'not eating' isn't on the list."

"Matt—"

"You've been here since Tuesday night. Now it's Thursday morning, and you haven't eaten anything. I really don't think you want to fight me on this."

She looked at him for a moment, debating whether it was worth the effort. Finally she let out a long, exasperated sigh. "Fine."

"Good. What do you want?" Matt asked as he stood up from the table and started towards the kitchen.

"I thought Foggy said you didn't have any food."

Matt chuckled as he opened the fridge. "Foggy's idea of food doesn't include anything that requires preparing. Frozen dinners, boxed macaroni and cheese…that's what Foggy tends towards. But I have more than enough to make breakfast. Or lunch. Whichever you want."

She followed him into the kitchen, gathering her hair over one shoulder. "I'm not picky."

"Alright. I'll figure something out."

Sarah rested her hands on the counter and used them to carefully lift herself up so she was sitting on the surface, next to the sink where she could lean back against the kitchen wall. "I didn't know you could cook."

"Learning to cook at home becomes a necessity when you can taste the brand of dish soap that a restaurant uses on their plates," he told her wryly. "I've gotten pretty good at it."

The idea of Matt being good at something as ordinary and non-violent as cooking struck her as amusing for some reason, and she watched with interest as he set an assortment of vegetables on the counter, along with a box of pasta and a few spices. Suddenly she remembered something she had meant to ask about the night before, but hadn't gotten the chance.

"So…how did meeting Lauren go?" she asked, watching him closely.

Matt's hesitance before answering didn't seem like a good sign.

"It went…fine," he said evasively, and Sarah narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously.

"You're definitely lying," she pointed out. "It didn't go well?"

"I…don't think she likes me very much."

Sarah couldn't help but laugh. "That's crazy. Daredevil is so friendly."

Matt grinned as he filled up a pot of water to boil the pasta, turning to her once he had set it on the burner.

"Speaking of Lauren," he said, his sightless eyes aimed somewhere over her shoulder. "Think you can tell me why she seems to be under the impression that my name is Leonard?"

There was a long pause.

"Um."

Sarah could her face heat up. Matt quirked an eyebrow and leaned against the wall next to her, effectively blocking her in as he waited for her to answer.

"I don't know," she said with an innocent shrug. "That's weird."

"Mhm," Matt said, nodding his head and looking thoroughly unconvinced. "Yeah, that is weird."

"Maybe you just give off that kind of vibe," she suggested.

"That's really not helping your case."

Sarah's phone buzzed on the kitchen table, and she glanced at it over her shoulder.

"Speaking of Lauren, that's probably her," she said, carefully slipping down from her seat on the counter and skirting around Matt, who just shook his head resentfully.

_At least she didn't tell him about the Devil Emoji._

"Hi Lauren," Sarah answered.

"You picked up! How's your head?" Lauren asked immediately. "Also, how's the rest of you? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm—I'm fine," Sarah said. "Listen, I'm so sorry about the baby shower—"

"What? Who cares about the baby shower?"

"… _I_ do. Because I ruined it."

"Actually, it kind of worked out really well," Lauren said dismissively. "I got all of the gifts I wanted, but I didn't have time to open them in front of other people and pretend to like everything. And then I only had to socialize with people for a little while before everyone left because you freaked them out. It was perfect. I mean, except for you almost dying."

Sarah groaned. "Does everyone think I'm crazy?"

"Oh, yeah," her friend said bluntly. "Also, they think you're on, like…a _lot_ of drugs. I think Cecilia helped get that rumor circulated when you passed out."

"Great. That's great. At least your mom wasn't there." Sarah shifted the phone from one ear to the other as she came back into the kitchen.

"Oh, she'll find out somehow. But I didn't call to talk about the baby shower, I called to talk about you. What the hell happened?"

"That's…a long story. One I'll tell you in person," she promised, partially to make sure she was clear headed enough to discern which details to include and which ones to leave out.

"Fair enough. Are you home yet?"

"No, not yet. I'm going home today," Sarah said. She chose not to mention that she had to go to work first; Lauren would only get upset while having no way of helping, which was never a good combination.

"You're still with tall, dark, and scary, then?"

Sarah laughed at the description and she sent a sideways glance at Matt. He didn't show any reaction as he continued slicing up some zucchini, but she knew he was listening.

"Yeah, I am."

"That dick hung up on me and then didn't call me back," Lauren informed her indignantly.

"You guys have each other's phone numbers?" Sarah asked in bewilderment. She hadn't realized their interactions had extended beyond that one meeting in the hospital.

"I needed a way to check on you after he basically kidnapped you from your hospital bed. Which I did not approve of, by the way," Lauren said with a frustrated sigh before continuing uncertainly. "But…he said he was taking you somewhere safe?"

Sarah leaned back against the counter next to the stove, watching Matt for a moment as he continued working on the cutting board.

"Yeah. Safest place I can think of," she said. Finally showing some indication that he was listening to the conversation, the corner of Matt's mouth tugged up into a small smile.

"Good," Lauren replied, sounding relieved. "That's something, at least. I know you guys are like, chill or whatever, but he seems like kind of an asshole."

Matt's smile disappeared as he cast his blank eyes up to the ceiling in exasperation.

"Yeah, he can be," she agreed lightly, earning an unamused look from Matt. "But he has his moments."

"If you say so," Lauren said doubtfully.

"Did it go that badly?" she asked. "Because he said it went just great."

"Well, I'd hate to see how his not-great conversations go, then. First of all, he was literally lurking in the corner of your hospital room, waiting for me to come in, and then he turned all the lights off and pretty much jumped out at me," Lauren began, and although Sarah knew she was exaggerating—she always did, without fail—she narrowed her eyes at the vigilante next to her anyway, who was now paying suspiciously close attention to the task of moving the vegetables around in the pan.

"Did he really?" she asked, wishing that Matt could see the look she was giving him, but positive that he was picking up on it anyway.

"Yeah! Oh, _and_ he put his hand over my mouth, which, like—gross. I don't know where that glove has been. I mean, I _do_ know—it's been all over a bunch of dirty fire escapes and door handles and probably had, like, criminal blood on it and I could have any sort of blood-borne disease now. What if I have hepatitis?"

She rolled her eyes. "I really don't think that's how blood-borne diseases work."

"Well, we'll see. You tell him if my baby gets hepatitis because he decided to cover my mouth up, I will literally fight him."

Matt's eyebrows went up in slight amusement at the possibility.

"Okay, I'll give him a heads up."

"Good. But don't ever actually tell him that. Dude is scary as hell," Lauren said, then after a pause she added, "But also kind of hot. You know? Maybe that's just the pregnancy hormones, I don't know."

Sarah should have known her friend would turn the conversation in that direction. She closed her eyes in exasperation for a second before glancing over at Matt, who looked like he was carefully suppressing a smirk.

"I'm glad that's what you were focused on while I was unconscious, Lauren."

"Listen, I'm a multitasker. I can be concerned for my friend's health and also be observant of what her rude and mysterious vigilante friends look like. I mean, you've seen him with his shirt off, right? When you guys are playing doctor, or whatever. He has to be fit as hell under that costume. Isn't he?"

Matt tilted his head and raised his eyebrows expectantly as he waited for her to answer the question, a cocky smirk on his face. Obviously Lauren was correct, and Matt knew it as well as Sarah did.

Sarah felt her face heat up. "He—it's—weren't you just saying he gave you hepatitis?"

"Like this is the first time I've thought a guy was hot while simultaneously thinking he maybe gave me a disease. Come on, I need to know these things."

"My brain isn't functioning enough for this conversation," she complained.

"Alright, fine, you prude," Lauren relented with a dramatic sigh. "Go back to bed. And stop by Mrs. Benedict's place when you get the chance—she's totally noticed you haven't been home in a while, and she keeps calling me asking if you've moved in with that dentist."

She could always count on Lauren to say the very thing she didn't want her to. "Okay. I will. Bye."

She ran a hand through her hair as she hung up. How was talking to Lauren so exhausting?

"Dentist?" Matt asked her curiously.

 _Just the boyfriend I made up to get Mrs. B to stop asking about your Columbia sweatshirt after you nearly died._ But Sarah was way too tired—and too embarrassed—to explain that entire scenario, so instead she changed the subject.

"So, is cooking like your back-up career? If Daredeviling falls through?" Sarah lifted herself back up onto the counter again, this time next to the stove so that she was facing Matt as he cooked.

Matt tilted his head. "I think we've had this talk before. Daredevil isn't actually my career."

"Right, right. Lawyering. Did you get all of your boring legal paperwork done?" she asked, reaching out and stealing a piece of green pepper from the assortment of vegetables in the pan. Despite her earlier protests, the smell of food was actually making her hungry.

"Ah…no," he admitted. "I'll get it done soon."

Sarah didn't know how he ever got any paperwork done. Maybe it was just her tendency towards nosiness, but if she could hear everything going on in her apartment building she would never do anything but eavesdrop.

"You got too distracted?" she asked.

Matt's hand stilled as he reached for one of the jars on his counter. "Sorry?"

"Well, you can hear all of your neighbors and stuff, right? I'd never get anything done," she said with a shrug.

"Right," he said, shaking his head and running his fingers down the rubber bands on the side of one of the jars to identify it before picking it up. "No, my neighbors aren't very interesting. It's all kind of white noise anyway. I don't register it for the most part, unless something unusual sticks out."

Sarah reached over to take another piece of green pepper out of the pan.

"Will you—?" Matt waved her hand away with the kitchen knife he was holding. "Knock it off."

"I'm not doing anything," she protested, but her laughter gave her away.

"Sure," he said skeptically. "Keep doing nothing, see how that works out."

"You're a lot less intimidating with your hair like that, you know."

"Yeah? Remember what I said about not being a morning person?" Matt raised his eyebrows, emphasizing his words by gesturing in her direction with the knife.

"You aren't allowed to threaten someone with a concussion, Matt," Sarah informed him, receiving only a shrug in return. "Plus, Foggy said not to let you boss me around so much."

"Yeah, but Foggy's not here."

Sarah laughed and held her hands up, refraining from stealing any more bites from the pan. She leaned her head back against the wall, watching as Matt finished cooking. She found herself thinking about the baby shower, and how she'd felt more alone than ever while surrounded by music and drinks and people who had once been her friends. Yet somehow, sitting on the counter in this tiny kitchen with just her and Matt, that feeling of loneliness ebbed away, if only temporarily.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

Unfortunately, Sarah couldn't stay there forever. When she got to the office, Jason was in a meeting with his door closed. A glance at the itinerary that she herself had scheduled told her that the meeting should be over in just a few minutes. She took a seat at her desk while she waited, idly glancing at the newspaper that lay nearby. One headline in particular caught her eye:

_Daredevil: Let's Stop Cheering For People Who Break The Law_

Sarah did a double-take as she saw the byline and accompanying picture: Cecilia Gladstone. The photo next to the name was tiny and grainy, but unmistakably the woman Sarah had been arguing with at Lauren's baby shower. Had Lauren ever mentioned that her cousin wrote for The Bulletin?

Leaning forward, she quickly scanned the article, which appeared to be a sensational opinion piece—a far cry from the hard journalism that the newspaper had once been known for. Her eyebrows steadily went up as she took in the various points the woman was making. _'Daredevil is just as much a menace to Hell's Kitchen as Wilson Fisk ever was; arguably more so. While Mr. Fisk had ties to the community—owning several companies and contributing to causes and small businesses across the city—Daredevil has no apparent connections to the city beyond his desire to control how the people living in it behave.'_ Further down the article, Cecilia repeated the point she had made to Sarah about the police: _'Our police force is carefully trained to protect and to serve; they take an oath and they must uphold it or face legal consequences. The vigilante has taken no such oath, and even if he had—who would dole out punishment if he were to break it? Can we leave our safety—and the safety of our children—in the hands of someone who has no one to answer to? Many citizens say they feel safer knowing The Devil of Hell's Kitchen is watching the city, to which I can only reply: But who is watching him?'_

The article was conspicuously absent of the scornful victim-shaming that Cecilia had exhibited at the baby shower—she had some sense for what wouldn't go over well with the public, at least—but the holier-than-thou tone was still unmistakably there.

Sarah slipped her phone from her pocket and texted Lauren. _Since when is your cousin Cecilia a reporter?_

Lauren's response was quick: _I wouldn't really call her a reporter. She usually just writes online clickbait articles, but I know she's been trying to get published in the actual paper. Why?_

Sarah shook her head. It looked like Cecilia had found the easiest way to get into the actual paper: write controversial articles about something everything has an opinion on. In this case, that 'something' was Matt. It was a lazy and easy tactic. Though she had to hand it to the woman: publicly insulting Daredevil and attaching her own name to it was ballsy.

Still, the knowledge that Cecilia worked for The Bulletin rattled Sarah more than she had expected; after all, it's not like she'd actually said anything about Daredevil that she shouldn't have known. But she'd had enough alcohol in her system that she _could_ have. She so easily could have drunkenly let something slip, not realizing she was speaking to a reporter. Worse, a reporter who Sarah assumed wouldn't hesitate to publish anything incriminating without bothering to corroborate. She'd never forgive herself if she woke up one day to find out that she'd blabbed Matt's biggest secret during a black out.

"Don't like the news today?"

Sarah jumped slightly and jerked her head up to see Jason standing next to her desk, observing her with a raised eyebrow. "S-sorry, what?"

"You look like you're reading your own obituary," Jason said, then gave a delighted chuckle at his own joke.

"Oh. No, no, it's just…" she gestured at random to a different story on the page, hoping to divert attention away from the one she had actually been reading. The other headline read: _'Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck: What Went Wrong After Ten Years Of Bliss?'_ "Just, um…Ben and Jen drama. I'm really invested in them."

Jason raised an eyebrow at that. "Well, once you've recovered…join me in my office for a chat."'

Ignoring the way her stomach twisted nervously, Sarah followed him into his office, where he closed the door before taking a seat at his desk. He didn't gesture for her to do the same, so she stayed standing, remaining in the somewhat safer ground between his desk and the door.

"So," he began, flashing her a wide, toothy smile. "I assume the delivery to the warehouse went fine the other night? It is so delightful to have an employee who I don't have to keep an eye on every second to know they're doing their job right."

"Yeah, the…the warehouse went fine," she said. She refused to call it a 'delivery'.

"Wonderful, wonderful," he said, continuing to grin at her widely but not saying anything else for a long time.

Sarah glanced around the room uncomfortably as time stretched on without him speaking, just watching her with that unnerving smile. Was that the entire conversation? Was she dismissed? Finally she asked tentatively, "Um, was that—all you needed?"

"Tell me, what do you remember from after you got hit in the head?" he asked.

"Um…it's all a little fuzzy," she said. "But I think I remember the big parts."

"That's what I thought," he said, disappointment coloring his voice. "It's a shame, though. You did such a wonderful job. So I thought you might like to see."

Sarah furrowed her brow as Jason tapped a few keys on his keyboard before turning his computer monitor so that she could see the screen.

"Take a look," he said.

Sarah knew what she would see on the screen, but it was unsettling all the same. The picture was crystal clear—not the grainy images that some of the old security cameras had shown—and her face was easily identifiable as she stood in the empty office upstairs next to McDermott's body. There was a hint of movement on the edge of the screen, near the door—it must have been just as Jason left. Sure enough, she saw McDermott grip the hammer and swing it at her head, and winced as she watched the impact knock her off her feet.

"Now, this next part is a little boring." Jason tapped the fast-forward button and the footage sped up as the Sarah on the screen slid down the wall and leaned her head back, closing her eyes. "You stay there for a long time. I honestly thought you were dead for a while there," he said with a pleasant chuckle.

Sarah frowned briefly at the comment, but remained silent with her eyes on the screen, where she watched herself finally stumble to her feet. She didn't remember swaying that much, or moving that slowly. But she did remember smashing McDermott's cell phone, and the image was incredibly damning.

"Fantastic. I didn't even think about the cell phone till I watched this. You're a natural. Tell me, have you ever done this before?" he asked her seriously, and she couldn't help the incredulous look that spread across her face.

"Moved…dead…people?" she asked him slowly.

"Precisely."

She stared at him for a long moment. "…no."

"Really? Well, I'd never guess," he said, turning back to the screen. He hit the pausing the image right as Sarah's face was in plain view. "Brilliant job, Sarah. If I ever need a reminder that you're a dedicated and loyal employee to this company…" He reached out and tapped the monitor, smiling widely. "Well, there's the proof."

He had phrased it as a compliment, and in a sick way she knew that he actually meant it as one. But it was also very clearly a threat; no one would ever believe that she wasn't complicit in Orion's illegal activities for as long as that video was around. Sarah's stomach flipped at the thought, but she had to remind herself of that small movement near the door at the very beginning of the clip: somewhere in that computer there was also footage of Jason being the one who actually killed McDermott.

"I was just doing my job," Sarah said quietly.

"Oh, I know. That's what you do. It's why I chose you for this position instead of bringing Ronan back on board. He's so emotional, like a child throwing a temper tantrum. But you—you're the opposite. It's interesting, because you're personality is really quite boring sometimes," Jason informed her cheerfully, and she bit back an offended frown. "But it works. No emotion. I like that. You just get it done. And Ronan never quite managed to do the same."

It was laughable to her that Jason saw her as emotionless—sometimes it felt like she was more emotional than anyone she knew. Her mind was a constant swirl of anxiety and guilt and confusion and a million other things. She could never get it to calm down. It made her feel slightly better, knowing just how wrong Jason was about her. She couldn't read him for the life of her, but apparently he couldn't read her either.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

Despite only working a half day, Sarah was so exhausted when she got off work that she was ready to go to sleep as soon as she got off. She called Matt to let him know that he could skip stopping by that night. She'd been halfway expecting him to try to convince her once again to stay at his place, but instead he just told her to get some sleep, and that he'd come check on her soon. She barely had the energy to take a shower before crawling into bed, not caring that it was still light out. She didn't wake again until it was time for work the next day.

Friday was a full work day, and even more exhausting. The smart decision would have been to go home and sleep more after she got off, but she'd put off having dinner with her dad too many times to cancel again. Besides, there were a few things on her mind she wanted to discuss with him. And so she found herself outside Mitch's front door Friday night, waiting for him to answer. He took longer than usual to come to the door, and when she stepped inside she immediately noticed that things had gotten worse. Her eyes wandered over the haphazard way the living room furniture had been rearranged, and the blankets that had been hung over several of the windows like makeshift drapes. She pressed her lips together and didn't mention it, deciding to first gauge what his mental state was at the moment.

"What are the flowers for?" she asked casually, noting the flowers that sat in a vase in the middle of the table. They still had tiny clumps of dirt on the roots, like he had pulled them straight from the ground outside somewhere. Next to the vase there were three plates set out instead of two.

"I got flowers for your mother," Mitch called from the kitchen, where he was rummaging around with something. "She's late coming home tonight, isn't she?"

"You…got them for mom," Sarah repeated softly, at a loss for words as her father came back into the room. What was she supposed to say to that?

"She's still mad at me, isn't she? Feels like she's always mad at me these days. She was just yelling at me yesterday for forgetting to pick you up from school. But I don't…know what I did this time," he said, giving her a sad, beseeching look. "How do I apologize?"

"I don't…" Sarah didn't know what to say. "I don't know, dad. I'm—I'm sure it will be fine."

The doctor had told her to use her best discretion when it came to explaining reality versus delusions to her father. Sometimes it was better to go along with it and avoid upsetting the patient, he'd told her. Especially if they were likely to fall back into the same delusion once they forgot having been told it wasn't real.

"She'll be here soon?"

Sarah swallowed hard. "Yeah. She'll be here soon."

"Good, good," he said, the cloud on his face clearing immediately. "Are we cooking something?"

"No," she said, wishing she could snap out of it as quickly as he could. She set the take out bag in her hand on the table. "I brought Italian food, remember?"

"Right. That's right," Mitch said with a vague nod. "Well, let's eat then."

They made light conversation as they ate, though they never touched on the topic that she'd hoped to talk about when she arrived. She'd been hoping that her father would be lucid enough to talk about some of the struggles he'd had with addictions—to drinking, to gambling, to who knows what else. She wanted to know how many times he'd done something he regretted because of something he was hooked on, and how many times it had to happen before he quit. But the Mitch who could have given her advice about that wasn't home tonight.

After dinner, her father turned on the news while Sarah began quietly sorting through the pile of unopened mail on his desk. She set aside anything that looked like bills so she could take them home and look at them, along with any medical correspondence. Almost all of that kind of mail already got forwarded to her, so the stack was mostly junk mail. However, there was one large envelope that stuck out from the rest, and Sarah froze when she recognized the handwriting scrawled across the front—she'd had to transcribe it into emails dozens of times before. It was Ronan's handwriting.

Slowly slitting open the top of the envelope, she tipped it to the side, her stomach twisting as the contents spilled out: the photographs Ronan had taken from her apartment.

He'd scratched her eyes out of every photo she was in; in some of them he scratched her mouth out as well. She brought a hand to her mouth as she picked up the photo of her and her father at her first piano recital. Graphic slurs were scribbled across the image of Sarah in her carefully selected recital dress and Mitch in the cheap suit he'd bought just for the occasion. She knew from memory that the two of them had both been smiling widely in the photo, but now their faces had been scratched out beyond recognition. The rest of the photos hadn't fared much better.

Mixed in with the photographs were images of other women that looked as though they'd been cut out of adult magazines. The women in the photos were all either naked or nearly so, posed in various suggestive ways. Their eyes had been scratched out as well, and similar crude words had been scrawled across their faces and bodies.

A rush of anger surged through her, and she gripped the photo in her hand tightly. How dare Ronan send her dad something like this? How sick was he? She bit back the wave of nausea that was building in her throat and hurriedly stuffed the offending pictures back into the envelope before her father could see. Underneath the buzzing anger, she was distantly grateful that neglecting the mail was one of the habits he'd developed lately.

She slipped the folder into her purse then rejoined her dad on the couch.

"Do you know what's taking your mother so long?" he asked her as she sat down.

"I don't know, Dad," she said, accidentally letting some of her anger at Ronan seep into her voice.

"Oh." Mitch twisted his fingers anxiously, so unlike the confident person she had grown up around. "I'm sorry. I already asked you that."

"No, I didn't mean…" Sarah's heart twisted at the lost look on his face. "I'm sorry, Dad. I just meant that I'm not sure what time she'll be home. But I'm here."

"I know, honey. And I'm glad you're here," he said, patting her hand. Then he gave her a sad smile. "Don't you miss her?"

Not sure how to answer that, Sarah just shrugged. "I miss both of you."

She could tell from the distant look on his face that he didn't know what she meant. It was unsettling to look him in the eye and see that he truly had no idea what was going on around him. But as Sarah gazed at her purse, where the envelope full of threatening photos still sat out of sight, a small, selfish part of her almost envied him.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

There was still a very faint lingering smell of multiple perfumes floating through Sarah's apartment when she got home, and she scrunched her nose up as she heaved her windows open to air the place out some more. She was tempted to go straight to sleep yet again, but tonight she had more important things to do.

Standing on her tip toes, Sarah grabbed the two wine bottles on top of her fridge, one half full and one still unopened, and set them on counter. Then she retrieved a bottle of whiskey from her freezer and the last few beers of a six pack from her fridge before digging out a few airplane bottles of liquor stashed around her kitchen, lining them up as well. She took a deep breath and then, starting with the whiskey, she poured the bottles down the drain, one by one. It was more symbolic than practical—the liquor store was just down the street, after all—but she decided maybe she needed that jolt of apprehension that hit her as the last bottle swirled down the drain.

The first task done, she opened her kitchen drawer and dug around until she found the assisted living pamphlets she had shoved in there weeks ago and brought them over to the couch, where she opened her laptop.

An hour of financial aid research later, there was a dull ache lingering behind her eyes. She tilted her head back against the arm rest of the couch, letting her eyes close for a moment. It wasn't long after that she heard the sound of boots lightly landing on her fire escape.

"Not sure I'm crazy about this new habit of leaving your window wide open," came a familiar low voice from across the room.

Her eyes still closed, Sarah shook her head. She couldn't help but laugh a little at the fact that the first thing Matt greeted her with was a lecture.

"You wouldn't be crazy about my apartment reeking of perfume, either," she replied with a yawn, sitting up slowly. "It's just for a little while."

Matt's mask obscured the top half of his face, but from the way his mouth pressed together tightly she had a pretty good guess he looked unhappy with the idea. But Sarah ignored it, focused on his heavy breathing, like he'd come straight from a fight.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"Yeah. Busy night out there," he said with a dangerous grin. "I probably won't stay for long. I just came by to talk about the news today."

She tilted her head back against the couch, covering her eyes with her forearm to block out the light from the table lamp, which seemed excessively bright tonight.

"Ugh, you mean that stupid article in the Bulletin?"

There was a short silence.

"What are you talking about?"

Sarah moved her arm away from her eyes and squinted at him. "…what are you talking about?"

"McDermott," Matt said, pushing his mask up so that it was above his eyes. "The police department officially declared him missing. He's one of their own, so they're going to pull out all the stops to find him."

Her stomach dropped at the news, though she knew there was no way she could have expected anything else.

"Shit," she whispered.

"The warehouse owner you brought the body to…he knows your name?"

"Yeah," she said distractedly.

Matt nodded as he adjusted one of his gloves. "Alright. I'll go talk to him soon. See if he's planning on talking to anyone."

That caught Sarah's attention, and her head snapped up. "What? No, Matt, don't…don't do anything to him."

"Are you serious?" Matt replied, letting out sharp laugh that bordered on a scoff. "He's the main recipient of Orion's illegal shipments, and apparently their go-to man for body disposal. And he can name you as the person who brought him McDermott."

"I know, I just…" Sarah didn't really know why she didn't want Matt to have one of his 'conversations' with Rob, who she barely knew. But she couldn't get the image of Rob's teenage son out of her head. "I get the feeling that maybe he's…he's in a similar situation to me."

"But you don't know for sure."

"No," she admitted.

Matt tipped his head back towards the ceiling in frustration. "Sarah…"

"Just, let me talk to him first. Okay?"

"And say what?"

"I don't know, just—I'll try to get a read on—on what he's about," she said, sounding less than convincing even to her own ears. She pushed her hair behind her ear and continued more insistently. "It's not like you can go around asking about what's going on there anyway. Not without making me look suspicious."

Sarah watched as Matt worked his jaw before finally jerking his head in agreement. "Alright. But I want you to tell me when you're going to talk to him, so I can be nearby. This guy holds a lot of Orion's secrets, and he might not be happy to hear you asking about them."

"Okay," she agreed, relieved that he didn't push the subject. She slowly stood up from the sofa and grabbed her glass, making her way to the kitchen for a water refill. Matt followed, leaning against the counter as she turned on the tap.

"What article were you talking about?"

"Just some opinion piece about you that this girl Cecilia wrote," Sarah said, feeling slightly foolish for even mentioning it. "It wasn't anything interesting."

"Not the positive kind of opinion, I'm guessing."

"Not especially. Do you pay attention to all of the things people write about you?" she asked curiously. "Or what they say about you on TV, on the radio?"

Matt frowned as he considered the question.

"Not usually. I can't do what I do and not expect people to talk about it, but…unless it sounds like they're getting somewhere close to figuring out actual information about me, I usually ignore it."

Sarah couldn't imagine knowing that every person in the city had an opinion of some sort about you, and simply ignoring it. As she drank her water and contemplated that, she saw Matt's blank eyes flick around her kitchen.

"Lot of empty bottles," he noted casually, but she didn't miss the way his head tilted just a fraction in her direction—probably trying to figure out if the contents of those bottles were now in her bloodstream.

"Yeah. I didn't need the temptation," she said tiredly. He turned towards her fully now, brow furrowed in confusion, and she continued. "I was thinking I might take a break for a while. From drinking. Just…just until it's not so much of a crutch anymore."

After an initial moment of surprise, Matt nodded earnestly. "Good. That's…that's really good. I'm glad."

"It's not like I'm addicted to it," she said, sounding more defensive than she had intended. "It's just…I don't know, when things are going badly…"

"You don't have to explain anything to me."

Sarah acknowledged that with a small, tired smile before it faded again. "I went to see my dad today."

Matt cocked his head at her serious tone. "Is he alright?"

"He's…" _He's not even there._ "He's not the problem. Ronan's been…sending him things."

A shadow crossed over the vigilante's face at the mention of the name. "What kind of things?"

Sarah hesitated before answering. She felt that mixture of anger and nausea again just talking about it, but she knew it was something Matt would want to know about.

"Photos. Of me, mostly. With the eyes all scratched out, and…death threats and other things written all over them," she said vaguely. She could tell from the way Matt's fingers twitched that she didn't need to elaborate on what those other things were. "And then a bunch of magazine cut outs of women from…I don't know, dirty magazines, I guess. Which I didn't actually realize existed anymore, with the internet being around, but…" She trailed off with an uncomfortable shrug.

Matt's face was carefully void of any expression as he listened, but there was a tick in his jaw that she recognized well. He was quiet for a long moment after she was done.

"What did your dad say about that?"

"He didn't get a chance to see any of it. I took it with me."

"I'm guessing there wasn't a return address on there anywhere that I could check out?"

"No," she said softly.

"Of course not," Matt said, his face darkening even more. He smacked the counter in frustration, and Sarah instinctively jumped a little at the loud impact. His expression softened slightly as he noticed her reaction. "Sorry."

"It's okay."

"Do you want me to stay with you for a while?"

She did. But unfortunately, she couldn't justify monopolizing the local vigilante just because she was having a bad day. There was almost certainly someone else having a worse one out in the darkness of Hell's Kitchen, and maybe Matt could actually do something to help them.

"No, I'm fine," she said, waving his concern away. "I'm probably going to bed soon anyway. I just thought you'd want to know about it."

He didn't look convinced. "You sure you'll be alright?"

"I'm positive," Sarah insisted. She reached up and tugged his mask back down so that it covered his face again. "Busy night out there, remember?"

"Alright," Matt said, the corners his mouth twitching up. "Call—"

"—call you if I need you," she finished for him. Matt started lazily walking backward towards the window, effortlessly avoiding the furniture in the way as he listened to her. She trailed after him, smiling slightly as she continued the list. "Lock the window, drink lots of water, don't run with scissors…did I miss anything?"

Matt nodded with a faint smirk, taking the light ribbing without complaint. Then he reached out and hooked a loose piece of hair behind her ear.

"Take care of yourself, Sarah," he said, letting his hand linger for a second longer.

Her breathing hitched slightly at the contact. Then he was gone.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

Pouring all of her alcohol away had seemed like a good idea at the time, but by the next night Sarah found that she mildly resented herself for it. She was alone in her apartment, caught in an unpleasant combination between jumpy and bored. Lauren was at some sort of parenting class with Greg, and Matt was working on tracking some arms dealer back to whatever group he was working with, so he wasn't stopping by that night. He'd told her that he'd have his phone on and ordered her several times to call if she needed anything, but she didn't think that avoiding her own thoughts really counted as an emergency.

So Sarah turned on some TV show—she didn't even know the name of it, just that the plot was easy to follow and didn't require a lot of attention. Trying to focus on anything too hard still gave her a dull headache. Even simple tasks at work the past two days had exhausted her, and she found herself drifting off on the couch as she watched the screen.

She had just started to fall asleep when her cell phone rang, unpleasantly jarring her out of her daze as she scrambled to answer. It was a Hell's Kitchen area code, but not a number she had saved in her contacts, and she could only think of one person that could be. Her anger from earlier hadn't faded much, and she answered against her better judgment.

"What do you want, Ronan?" she snapped.

There was a long pause on the other end, and she wondered briefly if he had hung up.

"Sorry, what?" said a female voice.

Sarah frowned and glanced at the number on the screen again. "Who is this?"

The person on the other end was silent for another couple of moments.

"This is Karen," the voice said finally. "Um…from the post office. I'm trying to get in touch with Sarah."

Karen from the post office. It took Sarah a few moments to remember who that was: the blonde woman who had let her cut in line. The one who had gotten so rattled when she'd seen the photo of James Wesley in Sarah's purse. Sarah sat up quickly, causing her head to spin.

"Karen! Yeah—yes. I—I remember you. This is Sarah."

"You said to call you if I wanted to get together and talk," Karen said, her voice hesitant on the other end of the line.

"Yeah. I'd still like to do that," Sarah said sincerely. In part because she was dying to know why Karen had had that particular reaction to that photo, and in part just because she had been genuinely nice. "When do you want to meet up?"

"Can you meet now, by any chance?"

Sarah blinked in surprise, then glanced at the clock on her wall: it was only nine o'clock, and the prospect of not being stuck in her apartment—alone, jumpy, and painfully sober—was alluring.

"Yeah, actually," she said. "Do you remember that noodle house I told you about?"

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

Half an hour later, Officer Donovan sat in an unmarked car, sipping his coffee as he watched Sarah through the front window of the restaurant he'd followed her to from her apartment. There were other tables between the window and her, but as people moved in and out of his line of vision he could still see her, sitting alone and fidgeting with her hair. He assumed that was a nervous habit, and it annoyed him. Or maybe it was just the situation that annoyed him.

For the most part, he didn't care what this woman did with her time. He didn't even really care where McDermott was, when it came down to it—all he cared about was whether or not he was about to get put under a more scrutiny than he wanted because of something Sarah was doing. But Ronan wanted to know where she was and who she was with, and every time he reported those details back to him he got a new arrest dropped cleanly in his lap. Little to no work required.

After a while of waiting, his attention was drawn to a woman in a floral dress as she entered the restaurant. She was tall, with long, wavy blonde hair, and she was looking around for someone. Sure enough, she spotted Sarah near the back of the restaurant. The brunette waved her over, and the woman took a seat across the seat from her.

Donovan slipped a small flip phone out of his inner jacket pocket and dialed Ronan's number.

"What is it?" the man answered, pleasant as usual.

"That best friend you were saying to keep an eye out for. You said she was tall and blonde, right?"

"Yeah."

Donovan kept his eyes on the woman sitting across the table from Sarah and a grin spread across his face. "I think we found her."


	24. Mistakes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, guys. I really wanted to get this chapter up in two weeks, and instead it took nearly a month again. I added on a little extra length to make up for it. Real Life is totally kicking my ass right now, and I'm kind of struggling with it, so send some good vibes my way? Hopefully when things slow down a bit I can do better, but for now I hope you enjoy this little chapter and all of the angst that comes with it.
> 
> PS: If anyone is going to San Diego Comic Con in July, PM me and let me know, because I'll be there! We can try to get into the Luke Cage panel together.

### Chapter Twenty-Four: Mistakes

Sarah wasn't sure what she had expected when she agreed to meet Karen in the small, brightly lit noodle house. That they would spill all of their secrets over bowls of pho, bonded by their strange encounter at the post office?

Instead, they sat across from each other, a slightly sticky table top between them, and made stilted small talk while the tension of the conversation they had actually come there to have sat heavily at the table like a third person. It wasn't until after the employee behind the counter had already called out their order and they'd brought their food back to the table that the conversation began to shift.

Sarah pushed her hair behind her ear before she began eating, forgetting that doing so would reveal the bruise on her face. It had slowly started to fade from a bright reddish purple to a sickly looking green color.

"That looks painful," Karen noted, gesturing towards Sarah's temple with her chopsticks. To Sarah's relief, there was no follow-up question about how she got it.

"Not so much at this point," she said with a shrug. "It's fading."

They were quiet for a few moments as Sarah tried to figure out if she was supposed to follow this thread towards more serious subjects or continue to let the small talk linger. Luckily, she didn't have to decide.

"Last time we met, you said that you thought maybe you could help me," Karen said, watching her closely. Her eyes were a startlingly bright blue; they made Sarah feel oddly transparent.

"Yeah."

"What makes you think I need help?" she asked, her tone more curious than defensive.

Sarah let her gaze drift to the bright paintings on the wall as she thought about it. What _had_ made her think Karen needed help? To be honest, she thought she had recognized something similar to herself in Karen the day they met: a rattled sort of loneliness that she often felt herself. But saying something like that would make her sound like a lunatic, which wasn't the image she needed to be broadcasting to someone who had seen her drop several photos of dead bodies all over the post office floor.

"You seemed nice," she said truthfully. "And I don't know a lot of nice people who don't need help after meeting James Wesley."

She watched Karen closely as she spoke to gauge her reaction to hearing the name. Sure enough, something dark flickered across her face, but Sarah couldn't quite place what it was.

Karen was silent for a minute as she leaned back in her chair and stared down at her food contemplatively, pushing her long blonde hair behind her shoulder.

"You're not a cop, as far as I can tell," Karen said suddenly, an apparent non-sequitur. "I Googled you."

Sarah blinked in surprise—first at the idea that anyone would think she was a cop, and then at the fact that Karen had been able to look her up.

"I…don't think I ever told you my last name," Sarah said slowly.

"You didn't. I saw it on your employee badge when you dropped your purse and your stuff spilled out. You work for Orion."

_There goes any hope of keeping my workplace a secret,_ she thought. She'd been hoping not to reveal too much about her life to Karen until she had figured out more about her, but it seemed as though Karen was a few steps ahead of her. There was no point in lying about it now, anyway.

"Yeah. I'm…a secretary there." Though she wasn't really a secretary anymore, was she? She didn't really know what her title was anymore. Personal assistant? Body hider? Secretary seemed like a safe, non-suspicious sounding job title to give. "Are you a reporter, or something?" she asked nervously, put on edge by Karen's knowledge of her life. She didn't need this to become the second time in one week she inadvertently started talking to a reporter without knowing it.

A wry grin flashed across Karen's face at the question. "Uh, no. Although you're definitely not the first person to think that. I just like to know things. Like…the fact that Orion used to be owned by Wilson Fisk."

She brought up Fisk with so much nonchalance that it was painfully obvious she wanted to know more.

"It was," Sarah said vaguely. "Probably half of the business in Hell's Kitchen were owned by Fisk at some point."

"Is that how you knew Wesley?"

"Yeah. He…hired me, if you want to call it that," Sarah said bitterly. Blackmailed would be a better word for it.

Karen leaned forward on her forearms, keeping her voice low despite the fact that their conversation was already camouflaged by the sounds of the nearby kitchen.

"Why did you have that photo of him?" she asked, caught somewhere between fascination and confusion.

Karen wasn't afraid to ask questions bluntly, that was for certain. Oddly, Sarah appreciated it, despite the slightly accusatory tone behind her words. The blonde woman was cautious and guarded, but she was being straightforward about what she wanted to know.

"Someone…gave it to me," Sarah replied. It wasn't a lie. "To—to make a point about something. Why did it bother you so much?"

"I just want to know why someone who works for one of Fisk's companies just happened to run into me while carrying around James Wesley's crime scene photos. Just a coincidence?"

Her odd wording caught Sarah's attention.

"You make it sound like there's a reason it wouldn't be," she noted carefully, but Karen just wet her lips and looked away, obviously not planning to elaborate. Sarah really didn't want her to bail on the conversation, so with a sigh she looked back down at her noodles as she twirled them around her fork. "So…did you find anything interesting? When you Googled me? I've never really checked out my internet presence."

Karen shook her head.

"Not a lot. Some YouTube videos of you playing the piano," she said. Sarah had forgotten that some of the recordings of her rehearsals and accompaniments had been posted online. Karen offered her a hesitant smile. "You're really good."

Sarah's heart twisted a little. It was a compliment she used to receive all the time, to the point where it had almost stopped meaning anything. Now it had been so long since anyone had heard her play that it felt strange and alien to hear someone's opinion on it.

"Thank you. I, um…I don't play anymore, though."

"Oh. I'm sorry," Karen said, and maybe Sarah was reading too much into a stranger's tone, but it sounded like she genuinely meant it.

"It's okay. It happens."

For some reason, the subject of Sarah's piano playing seemed to calm some of the suspicion that had crept into Karen's tone earlier. Maybe it was just the reminder that Sarah existed outside of her role at Orion. When she spoke again it was with a tentative openness.

"When I told you that I used to work for a big company and I hated it?" Karen prompted. "That was one of Wilson Fisk's companies, too. Union Allied Construction."

Sarah's eyebrows went up in surprise. Karen had implied that she'd worked for a company similar to Orion, but Sarah hadn't expected it to be _that_ similar. "What did you do there?"

"I was secretary, too. You can get into a lot of trouble as a secretary, it turns out," Karen said, running her hand through her hair.

"How did you leave?" Sarah asked.

"Not on good terms," she said darkly.

"No," Sarah said, shaking her head and leaning forward. "I mean… _how_ did you leave? They just…let you quit?"

Karen frowned, looking at her intently. "Is that…not an option for you?"

"Not really," Sarah said, trying to pick her words carefully. "The…job offer that Wesley gave me didn't exactly include an unemployment package."

The other woman was quiet for a beat as Sarah looked down at her bowl and stirred the noodles around as she thought about the night Wesley had shown up at her door. It seemed like a long time ago now.

"Who did he threaten?"

Sarah looked up in surprise.

"My family," Sarah said slowly. Then, taking a chance, she asked, "You?"

Karen's mouth twisted into a sympathetic frown before she answered. "Same."

It felt so strange to talk to a relative stranger like this; dancing around the details and specifics, but being so sure that she understood on some level anyway.

"Wesley liked having people under his thumb," Sarah said, reaching for her water glass. "So he could play mind games with them."

"Yeah, well, that kind of shit how you end up getting shot with your own gun," Karen said darkly, almost speaking more to herself than to Sarah.

Sarah's hand stilled over the glass and she glanced up at Karen, who was stirring the food in her bowl around with that same haunted expression she had worn in the post office that day. In the days after Wesley's murder, the details of his death had circulated around Orion over and over again, to the point where Sarah was very familiar with them. Everyone knew that he'd been found in an abandoned office building, that there were seven bullets lodged in his chest, that Fisk had been so outraged at his death that he'd beaten a member of his security team half to death afterwards. Up until Wilson Fisk himself had been arrested, the gruesome details of James Wesley's death were all anyone at work had talked about.

But no one had ever mentioned anything about it being his own gun that killed him.

Karen didn't seem to notice her slip, and Sarah resisted pushing the subject, not wanting to scare her off. Seeming to snap back from wherever she had drifted to, Karen's eyes met Sarah's once again, the troubled look pushed to the back once more.

"Hey, do they sell booze here?" she asked.

Sarah exhaled a small laugh; it was exactly what she would usually ask during a conversation like this one. "Yeah, they have some pretty good beer on tap."

"Great," Karen said as she slipped out of her seat. "I'm going to go check that out. Do you want one?"

It was tempting. Very tempting. Normally Sarah would have agreed automatically, but tonight she just sighed and reluctantly reached for her water.

"I…can't. Thanks, though."

"Alright," Karen said, frowning curiously. "I'll be right back."

As Sarah waited for Karen to order her drink, she idly traced the faded scars on her palm. It was a nervous habit she had developed, and one that she would probably keep, given that the scars appeared to be permanent. She looked up as Karen slid back into her seat, a glass of amber liquid in her hand.

"Why did you wait so long to call me?" Sarah asked her.

Karen took a deep breath, stalling for a moment before answering. "Well…I was watching the news today and I saw that there's a police officer missing."

Sarah stilled. "You mean Aaron McDermott."

"You know him?"

"No," Sarah said quickly, then cleared her throat and spoke more evenly. "I mean, I just—I saw the news, too. Um, why…would that make you call me?"

"He was the police officer in charge of Wesley's murder case," Karen said. "I guess it made me think of you…just with the timing and all."

There was nothing accusatory about her careful tone, but Sarah felt a twinge of panic in her chest anyway as she thought about what connections Karen might have made in her mind.

It made sense that McDermott would have gotten assigned Wesley's case; Fisk wouldn't want any actual, honest cops looking into it and stumbling across things they shouldn't. But a dirty cop like McDermott would only look exactly where he was supposed to. Did that mean that Donovan was now in charge of the case, or had it fallen between the cracks now that it had been so long?

"This place is really good," Sarah said abruptly, hoping to change the subject. It was painfully transparent, but then again, so was this whole conversation.

Karen looked disappointed, but didn't protest. "Oh. Uh, yeah…I've come here a few times since you suggested it. I like it."

"Did your bosses end up liking it? The picky eaters?"

"Yeah, they did," Karen said with a soft laugh. "Well, really Matt is the only picky one. Foggy will eat just about anything."

Sarah blinked, staring at the woman across the table.

"…what?"

Karen looked up in confusion, still chewing on her food, then shook her head and held up a finger while she swallowed. "Oh, sorry. My friends, Matt and Foggy. The two lawyers I work for."

Sarah felt like she had been dunked in ice water as she put two and two together. This was _Karen_. The same Karen who spoke a little bit of Spanish and liked cheesy soap operas. Karen who Foggy was very clearly in love with, and who Matt would absolutely not be happy about her meeting up with without his knowledge.

Did Karen know about Matt being Daredevil? Foggy was obviously in on the secret, and so was Claire. But the fact that Matt had never talked about her beyond a passing mention—much less ever involved her in anything to do with Sarah—made Sarah think she probably didn't know. Meaning Matt was probably intentionally keeping her away from that side of his life, and here Sarah was bringing her into it. And it was becoming more and more clear that Karen obviously had a side of her life that she wasn't bringing Matt into either.

Would Karen have called her to have this vague, tense conversation if she had known that Sarah knew her friends and coworkers, that she didn't actually hold the mysterious stranger status that Karen thought she did? The idea of letting Karen confide in her without Sarah being completely honest with her about who she was felt deceitful.

"I think I need to go," Sarah said suddenly. "I…just remembered that I'm really tired."

"Oh," Karen said, slightly taken aback, but nodding. "Okay. Uh, let me just get us some takeaway boxes."

As Karen slid out of her seat to go grab the boxes, Sarah found herself wondering how it was possible that Hell's Kitchen could be so small.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

Karen lived in the opposite direction from Sarah, and they parted ways outside the restaurant. Sarah tried to be as friendly as possible during their goodbyes, but her head was spinning with the new information of who Karen was. She knew she should call Matt and tell him now, before this whole thing blew up in her face. Fishing her phone out of her pocket, she blinked when she hit the home button and an unfamiliar background lit up the screen.

She groaned out loud as she realized that she had taken the wrong phone with her. Karen had the same model as her, and they both had plain black cases; it was easy to mix them up when they were both sitting on top of the table like they had been. Ignoring the exhaustion that weighed down her limbs, Sarah turned around to catch up with Karen, who could have only gone about a block in the few minutes since they'd separated.

Sarah used Karen's phone to dial her own number as she backtracked, hoping she would answer and be able to meet her halfway. To her surprise, she heard her own familiar ringtone echoing around in a parking garage a few yards away. Warily, she stepped over the concrete barrier that separated the garage from the sidewalk, pepper spray in hand as she quietly moved towards where she'd heard the sound. She could hear something else—a scuffling noise, and what sounded like muffled voices—as she rounded the corner.

Sarah swore under her breath as she saw Karen about twenty feet away, struggling with a man who Sarah immediately recognized as Officer Donovan. She broke into a run, dropping her takeaway box and her purse as she went.

As she got closer, she could see that Karen was putting up a good fight, though Donovan was significantly larger than her. He repeatedly tried to cover her mouth, and his hand was bloody from where Karen had dragged her nails across his skin. His other hand was holding a pair of handcuffs, which he was trying to get onto Karen's wrists, but she was struggling too fiercely for him to be able to get a good grip. With a frustrated growl, he slammed her into the side of a car they were parked next to, and even from several feet away Sarah could hear an ugly crunching noise as Karen's arm bent in away that it shouldn't.

Sarah hadn't really thought about what she would do when she actually reached the two of them, but luckily for her, her body seemed to react while her brain was still processing. From behind Donovan, she blindly grabbed his face, yanking his head back as he let out a surprised yell as he lost his grip on Karen's arm. Sarah immediately felt blood under her fingernails, and as he swung around she could clearly see several deep gouges near the corners of his mouth.

It took Donovan a split second to get over the surprise of a second person being there, during which Sarah—almost feeling like she was on autopilot—jerked up her hand that held the pepper spray and pressed the bright red button on top. A stream of bright orange liquid shot out of the container and directly into his eyes. Behind him, she could see Karen scrambling for something in her purse.

Donovan swore loudly, clawing blindly in the direction of Sarah, who hadn't yet backed out of his reach. His hands probably would have successfully found her throat, but a second before he made contact a loud crackling noise filled the air; a sound that Sarah was familiar with. It was the noise of several thousand volts of electricity being sent through a human body—and sure enough, Sarah caught sight of Karen standing behind Donovan, one arm held close to her body at an odd angle while with her other hand she was pressing a small stun gun against the back of his neck.

The electrical current made the officer's muscles spasm, and he reeled back uncontrollably, smashing into same car he had just bashed Karen's arm against. His head cracked loudly against the glass window of the car, nearly shattering it, and he slumped to the ground, unconscious.

The two women stood motionless for a beat, both breathing heavily and holding their respective weapons as they stared at the unconscious man on the ground.

Snapping out of it, Sarah knelt down next to the officer and pressed her fingers to his throat, relieved to find a pulse steadily beating in the spot where his partner's had been silent. She quickly reached over him for the handcuffs he had been holding, which had scattered a short distance across the ground when he'd dropped them. Looking around for anything close enough that she wouldn't have to try to move him, Sarah eyed the stop sign that was about two feet away. She quickly secured one handcuff around the pole of the sign and the other one around Donovan's wrist.

Reaching into his inner jacket pocket, she felt both his smart phone and small, plastic burner phone—as she'd been expecting. She took both of them out of his pocket, turning each one off and throwing them a good distance away, where Donovan couldn't reach them to call out and Ronan couldn't use them to track him.

Then she turned back to Karen, who was standing a few feet away, watching her while holding her arm at an awkward angle.

"Holy shit. Are you okay?" she said, still panting from her sprint across the parking garage.

"Yeah, I—" Karen hissed in pain, inhaling sharply through her teeth. "My—my arm. Something's broken, I think," Karen said, also sounding out of breath.

Sarah winced; it looked like Karen was right. "Okay, let's…let's get you out of here."

But when she tried to gently tug Karen along, the other woman didn't move, unable to take her eyes off of Donovan.

"Karen?"

"He's a police officer," Karen said in disbelief, her eyes glued to the now-visible badge on Donovan's belt.

"Yeah."

"Holy shit," Karen whispered, her eyes wild in a way they hadn't been before. "They know. How…how do they know?"

Sarah didn't understand right away. Then her eyes widened as she realized that Karen thought Donovan had been coming after her for something she had done. What reason would she have to think that there would be people after her, much less the police?

The haunted look that Wesley's photo had brought to Karen's eyes flashed across Sarah's mind.

She knew that she should tell Karen it wasn't her fault, that Donovan had been after her because of Sarah. It wasn't right to let her panic like this, to let her think she was the target here. But that would open the door to an entire conversation that she couldn't have; especially if Karen already suspected some sort of connection between Sarah and McDermott. Telling her that his partner was after her wouldn't help matters at all.

So instead she just cautiously took Karen's uninjured arm, pulling her away from the unconscious police officer she was still staring at.

"Come—come on," Sarah said. "We should go before he wakes up."

"Wait," Karen said, despite the way the color in her face was rapidly draining. "Just—hang on."

She quickly knelt down next to Donovan, reaching for the badge clipped to his belt. Flipping the small leather holder open, her eyes scanned the name and precinct listed there—both of which Sarah already knew, and would rather Karen didn't, but it was too late now.

"Connor Donovan," Karen said under her breath, the repeated it again as though she were memorizing it. Sarah waited to see if she would mention what she was planning to do with that information, but instead she just threw the badge down and stood up. "You're right. We should go."

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

Although Karen insisted that Sarah didn't need to stick around in the hospital waiting room, there was no way her conscious would allow her to leave—as much as the headache splitting her head open was encouraging her to. There were a lot of things she wanted to talk to Karen about, but nothing she could bring up in a waiting room full of strangers. So the two of them sat in the waiting room, not speaking. It always amazed Sarah how people had to just sit in ER waiting rooms, ignoring their broken bones and bleeding head wounds and who knows what else, until it was their turn to get checked out.

Karen was still on edge from the attack, and clearly in pain. She spent most of the wait staring at the linoleum floor, lost in her own thoughts. Sarah was too restless to sit and do nothing, so she selected a magazine from the stack that sat on the small side table next to them. She picked out a maternity magazine and she tried scanning a few articles for anything interesting to tell Lauren. But she was still having difficulty with focusing on things like small print, and after a while she just looked blankly at the pictures, oblivious to the curious look Karen gave the magazine.

Eventually, a nurse stepped into the waiting room and called Karen's name.

"Karen Page?"

"That's me," Karen said, standing up from the chair and cradling her arm at her side. Her face was tinged a slightly green color.

Sarah still wanted to speak with Karen privately, but figured she probably wouldn't want her around while the doctors were taking x-rays and whatnot.

"Um, I'm going to go find some coffee," Sarah told her as she stood up as well. "I'll come find you in a bit and bring you some?"

Karen just nodded distractedly as she followed the nurse down the hall and into a room off to the right.

Down in the hospital cafeteria, Sarah managed to procure two cups of very weak, lukewarm coffee. She sat alone at one of the small tables and absently stared down at the gray sheen that floated on top of the dark liquid. How was it that such a sterile environment served coffee that looked like it might kill you?

She should really call Matt now. She knew that. His friend was in the hospital because of her and he deserved to know. She even brought up his contact on her phone, hovering over the 'Call' button. But she couldn't bring herself to press it. How would he react to this? From the start, his friends had been a touchy subject with him. So the idea of her meeting up with one of them behind his back—and then getting her attacked and landing her in the hospital, no less? Didn't seem like it would go over very well.

Even if she could explain that, Sarah didn't know what to do about Karen's obvious and alarming link to James Wesley. Was she imagining it? Had she been spending so much time around people like Jason that she was seeing suspicion and darkness were there wasn't any? After all, Wesley had made a career out of associating with people who would all kill him at the drop of a hat; someone like Karen should be at the very bottom of that list. But Karen had known things about his death that even the higher-ups at Fisk's own company didn't know. And she almost seemed like she had been expecting an attack like Donovan's—dreading it, even. And what reason would she have for keeping such close tabs on Wesley's murder unless she had something to do with it? But more than any of that, Sarah had recognized the haunted look on Karen's face whenever Wesley's name came up; it was the same expression Sarah kept seeing in the mirror since McDermott's death.

But she couldn't tell Matt that; she couldn't just accuse his friend of something so awful with no proof. And with anyone else, she would just keep her mouth shut. But Matt could always tell when she was keeping something from him; he'd be hurt if he could tell she was lying again, and he'd be pissed if she told him the truth. There was no way to win. She didn't want to hurt Matt, and she didn't want to hurt Karen, who, despite her secretiveness, seemed like a good person. If there was anyone who understood getting pulled into ethically questionable situations, it was Sarah.

Sarah moved her finger away from the 'Call' button and pocketed her phone. Karen was getting medical attention, and she was in no immediate danger from Donovan. It was lucky in a way that this had been Sarah's first time meeting up with Karen; if she didn't know things like Karen's address, it meant Donovan didn't either. Sarah would think about this after she'd gotten some sleep, when it didn't feel impossible to string more than two thoughts together in her mind. Glancing at the clock, she figured she'd probably given Karen a decent amount of time, and she made her way back upstairs.

When she got to Karen's room, she was sitting on the edge of the hospital bed with her arm in a sling and a cast from her wrist to her elbow. Sarah handed her the coffee and Karen accepted it with her non-injured arm.

"Thanks," she said. "I'm just waiting for them to come back with the paperwork I need."

"I'm really sorry about your arm."

"It's not your fault," Karen said darkly, and Sarah's insides twisted guiltily. _Yes it is._ "I guess it's lucky that you turned back around to come find me."

"You seemed to be doing alright on your own," Sarah noted, remembering how furiously Karen had been fighting Donovan off when she'd arrived. "I'd guess it's not your first time…having someone try to hurt you."

"No," Karen said, shaking her head as she watched Sarah intently. "Not yours, either."

"No," Sarah agreed softly. She cleared her throat, looking down and tucking her hair behind her ear. "Um…but I—I'd try not to…dwell too much on what happened. You know?"

She knew how dumb that sounded even before Karen laughed.

"Don't dwell on the fact that a police officer just tried to kidnap me? Yeah, okay."

"No, I just mean…you know how the cops in Hell's Kitchen are. Half of them are corrupt. You don't know that this was really anything to do with you…personally," Sarah said weakly. It was the best she could come up with right now without admitting anything on her part.

After a pause, Karen nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right. No reason to believe that it was about anything I did," she agreed, sounding just as unconvincing as Sarah just had.

The sickly feeling that had been sitting low in her stomach for the past few days grew stronger.

"Are you alright?" Karen asked, looking at her strangely. "You don't look so great."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm just…feeling a little nauseous," Sarah said, waving her hand dismissively. She didn't mention that her head was splitting open, and that every cell in her body was screaming for her to drown tonight in a bottle of liquor. Was this really what being sober felt like? She didn't remember it being so painful.

Karen was watching Sarah closely, as though she were solving a puzzle. "Oh. Right."

"So, do you want me to call you a cab home when you're done, or…?"

"Oh, no, I'm fine. Foggy called a while ago, when you were getting coffee," Karen said, oblivious to the way Sarah's stomach jolted at her words. This situation was not going to endear her to Foggy. But at least it was him and not Matt. Karen continued, "I told him where I was and he insisted on coming down. He said he was just waiting for Matt to meet up with him and then they were both coming."

_Dammit._

"Sorry, they're…they're coming here right now?" Sarah clarified, trying and failing to sound casual.

"I told them they didn't need to. I mean, it's not like this is a life-threatening injury. But that's Matt and Foggy for you," Karen said, sounding exasperated in that way that people generally did when they talked about family. The same way Matt and Foggy talked about each other.

Sarah wasn't ready for that. Now right now, when her whole body hurt and her emotions felt oddly like they were on hyper drive—whether from the concussion or the lack of any alcohol to numb them, she wasn't sure.

"Listen, when Matt and Foggy get here…please don't tell them," Karen said lowly. "About what happened tonight, or…what we were talking about."

"What we were…? Karen, I barely even understand what we talked about," Sarah said, shaking her head. "Why—why don't you want them to know?"

"I just—I don't want them to worry," Karen said. "They both worry about me too much. Especially Matt."

Sarah's insides twisted guiltily again.

"You know, actually, I think maybe I should go before Matt and Foggy get here," she said, standing up from the chair and quickly backing away from the bed in hopes of making a clean exit. "You guys, um…probably want some time to yourselves—"

She had only taken a few steps when she backed into something tall and solid, and a part of her already knew who it was before she even spun around.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

Luckily for Matt, he had been very close to his own apartment when Foggy had called him on his burner phone, frantically rambling that Karen had been attacked and was hurt, and that they needed to get to the hospital. It had only taken him a few minutes to change out of his costume and into his normal clothes and dark glasses before meeting up with Foggy, who was already on his way there.

Now he gripped his cane tightly as he and Foggy made their way down the hospital hallway, trying to find the room Karen was in. Foggy said she had sounded fine when she'd called him, that she'd only said something vague about her arm being injured. But given her past propensity for close calls with death and danger, both Matt and Foggy were on edge over what might have actually happened. Matt in particular was grinding his teeth at the idea that he had been out tonight, patrolling, and yet he still hadn't been able to stop something bad from happening to one of the people he should be working the hardest to keep safe. If he couldn't protect his friends, what was he even doing?

"Dude, ow," Foggy whispered pointedly. "You've got my arm in a death vice."

"Sorry," Matt murmured, immediately loosening his hand from where it had unintentionally been digging into Foggy's guiding forearm.

"Goddammit, these room numbers don't make any sense," Foggy muttered in frustration. "If these are rooms 101C-104D then were does Hall E even start?"

Matt tuned Foggy's anxious voice out for a second, straining his hearing as he searched for a sign of where Karen was. It was difficult to pick anything out from the commotion—a man down the hall screaming at a nurse to get him more pain meds, a baby with a fever shrieking in the waiting room, a group of drunk college students explaining how their friend had knocked himself out doing a keg stand—but finally he caught a snatch of her voice between all the rest.

_"—said he was just waiting for Matt and then they were both coming—"_

"This way," he said, tugging Foggy towards a corridor off to the right.

"That's a good use for your bat hearing," Foggy said. "Navigation. Like a walking GPS, but better. And with a less annoying voice."

On the surface his banter sounded like it normally did, but Matt could hear the stress underneath. Foggy and Karen had been spending more and more time together the last few weeks, and Matt knew that for as hard as this was for him, it had to be even worse for Foggy.

As they got closer, he heard Karen again.

_"Listen, when Matt and Foggy get here…please don't tell them,"_ he heard her say, her voice low and nervous. _"About what happened tonight, or…what we were talking about."_

Matt frowned. Who was she talking to? What didn't she want them to know?

_"Karen,_ I _barely even understand what we talked about,"_ someone replied. _"Why—why don't you want them to know?"_

He nearly stopped in his tracks as he recognized the other voice. _Sarah._ What was she doing here? That wasn't possible.

Just as Matt stepped through the door to the room, Foggy just behind him, Sarah was backing away from the bed. Her back was to the door, and she didn't see them standing there.

"Actually, I think maybe I should go before Matt and Foggy get here," she was saying, shouldering her purse. "You guys, um…probably want some time to yourselves—"

Sarah backed directly into Matt, letting out a short yelp of surprise when she made contact before spinning around to face him.

There was a short, tense pause.

"Sarah?" Foggy said, the surprise in his voice already mixing with suspicion.

"Foggy," Sarah said blankly, then her head turned slightly to look up at him. "Matt."

"Wait, you guys know each other?" Karen's voice came from the direction of the bed, drawing both of the men's attention her way.

"Karen. Are you alright?" Matt asked as Foggy skirted around him and took a seat on the edge of the bed. He could hear the rustle of a cast on her arm rubbing against the hospital sheets, along with a sling over her shoulder, and even from across the room he could sense the pain radiating off her as she held her arm at an odd angle.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Karen said insistently, though the tension underneath her voice was obvious. "My arm is broken, but it's not a bad break. They're just taking forever to come back with my discharge paperwork. Busy night in the ER, I guess. How do you—"

"What happened?" Foggy demanded worriedly, examining the sling on Karen's arm.

"I…slipped on the subway station stairs and took a little tumble," Karen said. Her heartbeat skipped immediately, but even without it Matt would have been able to tell she was lying. "I'm sorry, how exactly do you guys know each other?" she asked once again, looking from Sarah to the two lawyers.

Matt started nervously, trying to think of an explanation that didn't involve Orion or Daredevil.

There had been a few times—maybe more than a few—when Matt had considered the idea of introducing Sarah to Karen. They both played such a big part in his life, and he spent so much time with both of them; it felt strange to keep them separate. But introducing her to Karen was complicated; her not knowing about Daredevil meant anything involving the two of them would require lies and cover stories. And he didn't wanted to lie to Karen anymore. So he had never come up with a believable explanation for how he knew Sarah, thinking he wouldn't need one anytime soon.

"Um. Well, we—I, uh—" Sarah stammered.

"It's—we've met from over at…the…" Matt continued.

"Mrs. Benedict," Foggy interrupted, sounding entirely exasperated by their collective inability to come up with a cover story on the spot. "She lives down the hall from Sarah, so we've just crossed paths a few times."

Matt bit back a relieved sigh. If it weren't for Foggy and his knack for covering Matt's ass, his horrible lying skills would have outed him long ago.

"Oh," Karen said slowly. Her long hair brushed against the sling on her arm as she turned to look at Sarah, her body language full of more tension now. "You…didn't tell me that."

The room was silent—or, silent to everyone else, at least. To Matt, the sound of Sarah's heart hammering nervously was deafening. He tried to ignore the suspicion that tugged at the back of his mind as he waited for her to speak, giving her a chance to explain and hoping that whatever she said would help make this all seem less confusing and alarming.

Instead, she opened and closed her mouth for a few seconds, then simply shook her head, turned on her heel and strode towards the hospital door.

"Matt," Foggy began, but Matt already knew what he was going to say.

"I should give you and Foggy a few minutes alone," he interrupted, already heading towards the doorway to follow Sarah. "I'll be right back."

Matt caught up with her halfway down the corridor, just as she was about to turn the corner down a different hallway. He came up behind her and swiftly slipped his hand into the crook of her elbow as she reached an open doorway to an empty exam room, where he quickly pulled her inside. She didn't jump at his sudden appearance; it seemed as though she'd already figured out he would follow her.

Matt shut the door behind them before letting his hand fall from her arm, and the two of them stood facing each other in tense silence for a few moments. He took a few deep breaths, trying to keep himself calm as different questions raced around his head.

"Are you hurt, too?" he asked. He hadn't really intended for that to be the first question he asked, but it was almost instinctive at this point.

Sarah shook her head.

"No," she said softly. There was another long pause until Sarah, apparently unable to stand the silence, starting speaking quickly and disjointedly. "I swear I didn't know who she was, Matt. I mean, I knew her name was Karen but I didn't make the connection that she was your Karen, but then it was too late to explain to her that I knew you and I didn't know whether she already knew about you being Daredevil or not and I swear I would have told you and Foggy if I had known who she was and I didn't mean for her to get hurt—"

Maybe it was the lingering effects of her concussion, or maybe it was just Matt's lack of patience that night, but her rambling seemed to be making even less sense than usual. All he did understand was that Karen was still sitting in a hospital bed with a broken arm and Sarah was lying to him— _again_.

"Stop it," he interrupted her, harsher than he'd intended, and Sarah fell silent as quickly as if he'd yelled it. "Just—just stop talking for two seconds and let me figure out which questions I want you to answer first."

Sarah just nodded wordlessly. Matt wet his lips and began pacing around the small exam room as he tried to get his thoughts in order. Different questions were pushing their way to the front from all different directions, and he didn't even know where to begin. He could feel Sarah's eyes on him as he paced the room.

"What happened to Karen's arm?" he asked finally, before adding sharply, " _Don't_ tell me she fell down the subway stairs."

Sarah hesitated for a second before answering. "McDermott's partner. Donovan. He, um…he was trying to take her somewhere. He said something about how he had someone who w-wanted to talk to her."

"Donovan was trying to take _Karen?_ " he asked in disbelief. Sarah nodded. "Why? To get to you? Why wouldn't he just take you?"

"I don't know," she said. "I—we split up after dinner, but we had the wrong phones and so I went back to find her and he was there, and I don't know why he followed her and not me—"

She was getting ahead of things again, spouting off pieces of explanations without actually making anything clearer.

"Slow down," Matt ordered. "Tell me how you two know each other."

"We, um…we met at the post office."

A long silence followed her words.

"At the post office," Matt repeated flatly.

"Yeah," she said lamely, apparently realizing how ridiculous that sounded.

"How long ago?"

"A while back," she said. "Around the time you met Lauren."

"And you never thought to mention that to me?"

"I didn't realize she was your friend before she mentioned you at dinner. We hadn't spoken at all since the day we met. Until tonight."

"Until tonight, when you decided to meet up with her despite knowing that you're being watched," he pointed out. "Did you even care that you might be putting her in danger?"

"I thought it would be okay," she retorted forcefully, frustration creeping into her voice. "I've been meeting up with Lauren and going to my dad's a-and running errands for Jason every day, all out in public. And nothing has happened. I never meant for her to get hurt."

"Well, she did!" Matt exclaimed, raising his voice for the first time since they entered the room. He ground his teeth and took another deep breath, carefully regulating his voice before continuing.

"You say that you two barely know each other. But for some reason Donovan singled her out as someone who could be used against you as leverage. How does that make _any_ sense?"

"I don't know."

"Why did Karen lie and say that she fell down the stairs?"

"I don't _know_ ," Sarah repeated, then at Matt's aggravated growl she quickly added, "She said she didn't want you guys to worry about her."

Matt struggled to figure out what was off about her voice, her heartbeat, her whole demeanor. It was like she was telling him the truth, but not all of it. That was her specialty, after all.

"You're lying. I just can't tell what you're lying about. You're leaving something out, and I don't know _why_ ," he said, not bothering to hide his frustration. "I don't get it, Sarah. I thought we were—" Matt stopped, pressing his lips together. _I thought we were past this._ "What were you guys even doing tonight?"

"We met up at a noodle house. To talk."

"Mhm," he murmured, rubbing his mouth agitatedly. "Talk about what?"

Sarah paused. "Our jobs."

"Your jobs?" Matt said, raising his eyebrows. "And somehow the names of the only two coworkers she has never came up?"

"Not that job. Her old one. At Union Allied."

Of course. The big thing that Sarah and Karen both had in common: two former secretaries for companies owned by Fisk. That and their infuriating knack for getting involved in dangerous situations by being simultaneously secretive and reckless.

"So that's what Karen was asking you not to tell me about?" he asked, his voice dripping with skepticism. "That you guys…talked about your jobs?"

"You heard that?" she asked softly, to which he only raised his eyebrows. "I…Matt, I don't think this is something I should get involved in."

Matt barked out a short laugh of disbelief.

"You couldn't have decided not to get involved _before_ Karen ended up in the hospital?"

He could sense the heat spreading across her skin as her face flushed, but she gave him no answer. Shaking his head, he started to leave.

"Matt, no—don't leave, I'm s—"

"Don't say that you're sorry when you won't even be honest with me about what's going on with you two."

He should have known this would happen, sooner or later. Sarah kept so many secrets from him—from everyone—that one of those secrets was bound to hurt someone he cared about. This was why he had kept her at arms length to begin with, he reminded himself.

"James Wesley," she blurted out as Matt reached for the door handle.

He stopped, turning his head back towards her. "What?"

Sarah hesitated, as though debating whether or not to elaborate. When she did continue, it was stilted, as though she were forcing the words out.

"Karen and I _did_ meet up to talk about our jobs," she said slowly. "But…we were also there to talk about James Wesley."

Matt furrowed his brow as he let his hand slip from the doorknob, a sense of dread building in his stomach. Not only was something strange going on with Karen and Sarah, but now it involved Fisk, too. "James Wesley? Why?"

"She…" Sarah looked away, crossing her arms uncomfortably. "Karen knows things about his death that she shouldn't, Matt."

"What are you talking about?" he asked, tilting his head.

At the dangerous tone in his voice, Sarah's resolve seemed to waver, and she began to backtrack. "I don't…maybe Karen would be the—the better person to—"

"I'm not asking Karen," Matt cut her off. "I'm asking you."

She chewed her lip for a moment before answering. "Karen knew that Wesley was shot with his own gun. Even people at Orion didn't know that. A-and she's been keeping track of who's been investigating his case. She _freaked out_ when Donovan came after her, Matt. She kept saying that someone knew about what she had done."

Matt's head was spinning as he tried to process everything she was saying. She couldn't possibly be insinuating what he thought she was.

"What are you trying to say, Sarah?"

"It seemed like maybe…maybe she had something to do with Wesley's murder," Sarah said, so quietly that no one without Matt's hearing would have been able to hear her.

The silence seemed to stretch on longer than it ever had before, painfully tense.

"That's insane," he said.

"I know," Sarah said quickly. "I know that. But…when you heard her asking me not to tell you guys about something…she wasn't just talking about getting attacked. She meant the entire night. Including us talking about Wesley."

"Did it include her telling you that she _killed_ him?" he asked incredulously. "Y-you get Karen attacked, and now you're accusing her of, what? Murdering someone?" He scoffed sharply. "You've got nerve, I'll give you that."

"I didn't say that she killed him," Sarah argued, and for some inexplicable reason she was now getting as angry as him. "But it—it doesn't seem insane to me to think that maybe…she had some connection to what happened to him. That she knows something about it that she hasn't told you, at least."

"No, Sarah, that's—that's crazy. That's huge. We're talking about taking a life."

"I know that!" she exclaimed. "That's why I wasn't going to say anything to you. I knew you would react like this—"

He nearly had to laugh at that. Sarah threw something like this at him out of the blue and thought he would react calmly?

"What, react badly to you telling me that Karen is a murderer? Just a few minutes after talking about how you barely know her?" he shot back. "Karen is my friend, Sarah. I would know if she was keeping something like that from me—"

"Would you, Matt?" Sarah interrupted him. "It's not like she knows everything about you. If you're keeping a huge secret from her, who's to say she's not keeping one from you, too? How well could you two possibly know each other when she's oblivious to an entire half of your life?"

Matt slammed his hand against the metal medicine cabinet next to them, making Sarah jump violently.

"It's none of your business who I decide to tell my secrets to," Matt said in a low, hard voice. "Alright? You don't have the right to drag my friends in all this—"

"I thought I _was_ your friend," she said, and there was a waver in her tone that tugged painfully at something in his chest. "But at the end of the day, I'm still not on the same level as Foggy, or Claire, or Karen, am I? Y-you say all this stuff about being on my side, but they're still the ones who you see as needing to be protected from people like me."

How was she possibly making him out to be the bad guy, here? Why didn't she get that he wasn't trying to protect Karen from her, he was trying to protect her from all of the danger that followed her around, the same things he was trying to keep away from Sarah herself?

"That's not true," he argued.

"Yes, it is. I'm sorry that Karen got hurt, I really am. But you _know_ me, Matt. You know I wouldn't do that to you, I wouldn't hurt someone you care about on purpose. And you know I wouldn't just—just accuse her of something like that for fun. So why do I still get the enemy treatment?" she asked angrily, her words spilling out like she couldn't control them. "No matter how many times I think we're moving forward, I'm still just a threat to the things you _actually_ care about. Maybe it was stupid to think that we were ever really going to move past that. Maybe you can't start with zero trust and expect to build something from that."

Did she really think that? A flash of hurt crossed Matt's face, before he carefully schooled his expression back into a neutral one.

"Maybe you can't," he agreed flatly. He took a step back, towards the door again. "You should go home. I need to go check on Karen."

As he left the room, he could hear her breathing change, and he was positive she was about to start crying. Part of him wanted to turn around, to go back into the room and not leave until things were okay between the two of them again. But from what she'd said, it didn't sound like that was what she wanted.

So instead, he made his way down the hospital hallway towards where Foggy and Karen were waiting, away from Sarah and all of the complicated and painful things that had just happened between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In other news, side effects of a concussion include erratic mood swings, and I like writing dramatic scenes when I'm stressed. Sorry! But just know that where there are fights there are fluffy reconciliation scenes.


	25. Choices, Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, y'all, listen up. I think I might have mentioned that there would be a reconciliation scene coming up, and there is…but you might have to wait another chapter. I decided to end this chapter at an earlier point than originally planned so that I could post it before Comic-Con (and I actually wrote the last part of it while on the train to San Diego). So instead you get some angst and some violence for now. But on the bright side, I got this chapter up in a little over two weeks as opposed to a month!
> 
> Also, thanks to all of you for the kind messages wishing me well with my Real Life stress. It's so wonderful to have a community of awesome people here to always make me feel better.

### Choices, Again

A short while after Matt had left her standing alone in the empty hospital room, Sarah found herself in front of a liquor store, debating whether or not to go in. Of all the times to give up drinking, why she picked now, again?

After a few minutes of lingering, she shook her head and made herself walk away, hoping the fresh air (or, as fresh as the air ever got in Hell's Kitchen) would do more to clear her mind that alcohol would have.

She wished that she had held out and not told Matt her suspicions about Karen. He probably would have gotten past the injuries Karen had sustained once a little time had passed and he'd had time to think about it. But accusing Karen had been a mistake. Sarah knew how protective he was of his friends, knew that Karen had been in Matt's life as someone he cared about long before Sarah ever showed up—what did she think he was going to do when she told him? Instantly believe her that one of his best friends might have killed a man? She wasn't even sure she believed it herself.

But when he'd started to leave the hospital room she had just panicked, thinking she might have ruined everything with him, and it had hurt more than she'd expected. And before she knew it the words had just spilled out, making everything a million times worse.

Because after that argument, it was painfully obvious that Sarah was not—and probably never would be—in the same category as Foggy and Karen. They were the good people in Matt's eyes, the light parts of his life who needed to be protected. And Sarah, no matter how many times Matt helped to keep her safe, was still something else, something not quite as light and good as the two of them. She was still just a few steps away from being seen as an enemy, no matter how many times he called her a friend. Maybe she had earned Daredevil's trust, but the moment she crossed the line into affecting Matt Murdock's life, things were different.

She half expected Matt to show up that night, either to reconcile or to yell at her some more—she wasn't sure which seemed more likely at this point, but probably the latter. But the window to her fire escape remained silent.

He didn't show up the next night either, and she wasn't sure if she was glad or not.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

"This seems dramatic."

"It's not dramatic. This is just what we have to do for a little while."

Sarah was sitting cross legged on her couch with her laptop open in front of her, a bag of popcorn on her lap and a her second-largest kitchen knife—the largest having never been returned to her after that night on the roof—on the coffee table next to her.

Lauren's skeptical face squinted at her through the computer screen. After the fiasco with Karen and Donovan two days ago, Sarah had restricted her visits with Lauren to Skype dates and phone calls.

"I can't believe you decided to ground yourself two days before my due date."

"I know," Sarah said guiltily. "I'm sorry. But…I have no way of telling when I'm being followed and when I'm not. I can't lead the crazy people in my life straight to your place—or anywhere else. I'm just going back and forth from work to home, and that's it. At least until…"

"Until what? These guys die of old age?" Lauren asked.

"Until I figure something out," Sarah said resolutely, sounding more confident than she felt. In reality, she had no plan for shaking off Ronan and his new lackey, Officer Donovan. If it was just Ronan tormenting her, she could maybe try to get him arrested, but she was certain Donovan would somehow find a way around that. And the one person she'd been hanging her hopes on to help her appeared to no longer be an option.

"Are sure you should be staying in your own apartment if you're so worried about stalkers that you can't even come visit me?"

"Yes. I'm fine," Sarah reassured her, waving the kitchen knife around so that Lauren could see it through the webcam. Her friend looked skeptical at the sight, as though Sarah were playing a joke on her.

"Really? What, you're going to Norman Bates someone with a chef knife?"

Sarah shrugged. "Not if they don't try to come into my apartment."

For a minute, Sarah thought her slow internet connection had caused the video connection to freeze again, before she realized that it was just Lauren who wasn't moving. Instead she regarded Sarah closely through the screen, a contemplative frown on her face.

"You're really serious," Lauren said. "I mean, you'd actually use that thing on someone."

Sarah was slightly caught off guard by the question before she thought about it from Lauren's point of view. She had been careful to skim over most of the more violent aspects of her new life when she'd explained everything to her friend. Obviously Lauren knew that the things Sarah was doing were dangerous and involved violent people, but it occurred to her that she hadn't really told Lauren much about any of the violence she herself had had to inflict on people. She wasn't sure that she ever did want to tell her.

"If I had to, yeah," she said.

Lauren shook her head. "Sometimes it still feels like maybe you're playing a big joke on me. Like, maybe it's a thing in some culture somewhere to play weird, elaborate tricks on pregnant women and make them think their best friends have turned into super spies."

"If I was a super spy, I wouldn't need to hide in my apartment with a knife and pepper spray," Sarah said.

"Well, why aren't you still staying with Dread Pirate Roberts? He seemed pretty convinced that his bat cave or whatever was the safest place for you to be."

Sarah fidgeted with the corner of her popcorn bag. "I don't know. We aren't really…getting along super great right now, I guess."

"What happened?"

"I…accidentally got someone hurt," Sarah said, choosing her words carefully. "Someone who isn't involved in all of this. Or, I mean…I don't think she is. I didn't mean for her to get hurt, but she did, and it was careless of me. But then it turned into this big argument, and…I don't know. I think maybe I've been misinterpreting…where we stand with each other."

"I'm sorry," Lauren said, sympathetic despite the vagueness of Sarah's explanation and the fact that Lauren didn't particularly care for Matt. "I mean, are you…? I don't really if you guys have the kind of thing where fighting is no big deal, or if you're…"

Sarah shook her head. "We do fight a lot, but this feels…different. Like more personal. I don't know. Let's…let's talk about something else. How's everything going with getting ready to go to the hospital?"

"It's fine, I guess. Greg has a backpack with stuff by the door, ready to go. He texts me like three hundred times a day while he's at work. I think he thinks giving birth involves the baby just suddenly shooting out and he's somehow going to miss it, or something," Lauren said with a roll of her eyes. "Hey, do you think you'll be able to come see me in the hospital when the baby is born? We'd always kind of planned that Greg would be with me for the painful, bloody part and then you'd be there right after when the baby is all clean and not covered in gross mucus."

"Yes," Sarah said immediately. "I will be there."

"How? I mean, I want you there, but I also want you safe. And I want her safe," Lauren said, resting her hand on her stomach.

"No, Lauren, I'll—I'll figure out a way to be there without anyone knowing. Okay? No one involved with this knows who you are—"

"—well, except for the literal Devil of Hell's Kitchen—"

"—no one who would hurt you," Sarah corrected herself. "And I'll come up with a way to be there. I'll dig out one of my old Halloween costumes and wear it as a disguise if I have to."

Lauren laughed at that, and Sarah was relieved to see the worry leave her face. "Sarah, I've seen your Halloween costumes. They're all super slutty. I don't think any of them would successfully work as a disguise. Except for maybe the slutty nurse costume, since I will be in a hospital."

"I'll dig out my thigh highs and stethoscope pronto."

"I'm sure my mom and Cecilia will love that."

Sarah wrinkled her nose. Lauren's mother was one of the least likable people she'd ever met, until she met Cecilia. "They'll be there?"

"Unfortunately," Lauren said with a groan. "My mom is insisting on driving down from upstate for the birth, for god knows what reason. Maybe to criticize me on my labor breathing or something. And Cecilia is living in the city now that she's got that position at the Bulletin, so my mom says she's going to be 'checking in' on me after the birth. AKA, 'spying on me for my mother'."

"Gross."

"Right?" Lauren agreed, then glanced down at the corner of the screen where her computer's clock was. "Speaking of gross, I need to go brush my teeth and maybe, like…put some deodorant on or something. Greg will be home in a minute, and do you know what's constantly recommended to me as a way to speed up the whole labor induction thing?" She waggled her eyebrows suggestively, leaning into the camera so Sarah could see them more clearly.

"Oh, ew," Sarah said, laughing and shaking her head. "I don't want to hear about you and Greg's sex life right now."

"You're a prude, Sarah Corrigan," Lauren told her. "I'll talk to you later, okay? Be safe."

"You, too," Sarah said.

Lauren ended the call and Sarah closed her laptop, trying to figure out how she was possibly going to keep the promise she'd just made to her friend.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

While Sarah was talking with Lauren, Matt was blocks away, keeping his mind busy by letting his Daredevil side take over for the was no better distraction than a good fight, and he found a good number of them that night. But eventually it was time to return to his own place, where he was confronted with the doubts that had been sitting in the back of his mind all night.

Sarah had been the one who led Karen into danger with her carelessness. She was the one who brought up horrible accusations, and she was the one to say that they would never be able to truly trust each other. So why did he feel so guilty?

And most importantly, why couldn't he get the possibility of a connection between Karen and Wesley out of his mind?

Matt shook his head. This was insane. This was Karen, after all. Karen who wore sundresses and floral perfume and cooked her grandmother's virtue-filled recipes. Karen who brought him balloons with monkeys on them.

Karen who also consistently lied to him—from the Union Allied pension file when they first met all the way up to how she had broken her arm the night before.

As much as he wanted to believe that he knew Karen too well to believe anything like what Sarah had said, a small voice in the back of his mind kept reminding him that the timeline of when Wesley was killed lined up exactly with when Karen started acting strange—drinking more, talking less, jumping at the slightest noise. But the idea that the two events were related was so absurd that he had never even considered making any sort of connection between them.

…but where _had_ Karen been when Wesley got shot?

And if he was asking himself these questions, could he really blame Sarah for doing the same about someone she hardly knew?

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

The next night, Matt did show up on Sarah's fire escape.

Sarah was washing the dishes when she heard the knock at the window and briefly considered just not letting him in. But that would be childish—and besides, it wasn't like their fight changed the fact that they were working together.

She wordlessly slid the window open to let him in before returning to her task. She scrubbed a pan that was already fairly clean as she waited for Matt to say something.

"I dropped by the police station yesterday," he said finally. "It didn't sound like Donovan told anyone what happened in the parking garage."

"Good. I'm glad." Sarah hadn't really expected that the police officer would try to come after her through any official means for what had happened that night. It would put him too close to a lot of scrutiny he couldn't possibly want. Of course, that didn't mean he wasn't still following her around.

There was a long silence during which she couldn't tell if Matt was trying to figure out what to say, or just didn't have anything to say at all.

"Sarah…"

"Nothing important happened at work today," she interrupted him quietly before he could go into whatever argument or apology he was about to make. "I probably should have called and told you so you knew you didn't need to come over."

But Matt wasn't letting her change the subject.

"Sarah, I know you're pissed," Matt said, leaning against the sink as she kept her eyes on the dishes she was furiously doing. "No one washes dishes that violently."

"They don't get clean otherwise," she said stubbornly.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you. It—it just caught me off guard. Both sides of my life that I thought were completely separate just colliding out of nowhere."

"Yeah, but both sides of your life didn't get yanked into an empty hospital room and accused of being a liar. Just me." As soon as she said it she knew that she wouldn't be able to keep herself from saying more even if she tried to, as though one side of her wanted to fight more and one side didn't.

"I didn't say you were lying. I said you were wrong."

Sarah put down the dish she was scrubbing and turned to face him fully. It annoyed her that he seemed to think she was angry at him for yelling at her; she could handle being yelled at, she wasn't a child.

"If it had been me with the broken arm and Karen was the one you didn't expect to see…would you have gone off on her like that? Would she have gotten yanked into an empty exam room and yelled at?"

There was a long, tense pause.

"No."

Sarah nodded, pushing her hair out of the way with her wrist before turning back to the sinks and dipping her hands back into the water. "Why not?"

"You know why not," he said. "Karen…doesn't know that side of me. You do."

"Well, lucky me."

"I never said you were lucky to know me," he said wryly. "Listen, I wasn't trying to…" he paused, tilting his head back and exhaling as he tried to figure out what he wanted to say. "I don't always make the most rational calls when my friends are in danger."

Sarah didn't reply.

"Alright," Matt continued after a silence. "If we're doing hypotheticals, what would you have done if the situation were reversed, Sarah? If it were Lauren instead?"

Sarah bit her lip. She knew exactly what she would have done if she had thought Matt and Lauren had never met, only for Lauren to show up in the hospital with broken bones and vague lies about how she got them. She'd probably have freaked out worse than Matt had.

"I…it's different."

"How?"

"You really need me to explain why the idea of you being around my friends is more alarming than me being around yours?" she shot back, wishing even as she said the words that she hadn't.

There was a long silence during which Sarah didn't look up, because she didn't know which expression she least wanted to see on his face; the impassive mask she knew he could put on so well, or the same hurt look he'd worn just before leaving the hospital room.

"No I don't," he said softly, and immediately she wished that he had gone with impassive instead.

It seemed like he was waiting for her to say something else, but she just kept focusing on the hot water in front of her. She didn't want to get into another argument about their history and who posed the bigger threat to the other's life. They'd had that fight too many times. Mostly she just wanted the conversation to be over, because she couldn't figure out how she felt about all of this while he was standing so close to her, listening to her heartbeat and making her feel like she was being x-rayed.

After a few moments, she felt him move away from his place beside her, then the window slide open and closed again as he left.

Sarah tried her best to ignore the sick feeling in her stomach. This was why she always forgave people, why she didn't fight with her friends. She wasn't good at fighting with people. She always wanted to apologize after just a few minutes of being angry; it was something Lauren gently teased her about often. But this would be easier, in the end. Acting like just business partners was easier, after all; neither of them would have to worry about who was getting more attached to the other.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

The next day, after she got home from work, Sarah sat her dining room table, tracing the edge of her phone and wondering if she was making the right choice. She remembered Matt telling her a little while back about having a court date today. She knew she was taking the easy way out by calling his burner phone when she knew he was in the court room and wouldn't have it on. This wasn't the kind of thing that deserved to be said over voicemail, but she couldn't handle another emotionally draining encounter with him right now, especially given what she was about to say.

She waited until the line stopped ringing and the generic voicemail greeting came on.

"Hey. Um…listen, I've been thinking and, um…" Sarah swallowed and rolled her eyes at herself, at how hesitant she sounded. She cleared her throat and forced herself to sound more firm as she continued. "I think with both of our schedules and—and how busy we are, maybe we should just…stick to what we originally decided on. At the beginning of all this. I'll call you if I have any information to pass along from work, but otherwise…you don't really need to come by." Sarah fidgeted with her hair as she tried to think of something to say, a better way to sum up why she was doing this. Instead she just lamely ended with, "Sorry…for doing this over voicemail."

She bit her lip and hung up before she could ramble more. Why was this bothering her so much? It wasn't like this was a years-long friendship she was dealing with—she wasn't even sure it was a friendship at all, after the hospital. Her head knew this was the smart thing to do: she had gotten too attached to someone who didn't hold her at the same level. Not completely, at least. He seemed to trust her with Daredevil, but not with Matt. And since she didn't have half of herself that she could hide away from him, it made sense to put distance between them. But for some reason she couldn't—or wouldn't—quite think about, it made her heart twist in her chest to do so.

Matt called her back a few hours later, and she didn't answer. He didn't leave a voicemail, but he didn't come by the apartment that night either, so it seemed as though he'd gotten the point.

Sarah had hoped that simplifying their relationship would help make her feel better, but as she sat alone in her apartment that night she just felt worse.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

_"…you don't really need to come by,"_ Sarah's voice, quieter and layered with a different kind of tiredness than usual, played back through the speaker on Matt's burner phone. " _"Sorry…for doing this over voicemail."_

And then she hung up.

Matt closed his eyes and swore softly under his breath. This wasn't where he had thought this entire situation with Karen and Sarah would end up. Had he really hurt her that badly? It wasn't like they'd never had an argument before. He'd wanted to protect Karen, but he'd never wanted to distance Sarah in the process.

Sarah didn't answer when he called her back.

He listened to the voicemail once more, wincing slightly when he heard her voice waver somewhere in the middle of it. At the end of the message, an automated voice came on asking him if he wanted to replay the message, save it, or delete it.

"Delete message," he said.

_"Message deleted. You have one saved message."_

The saved message started playing automatically, and Matt blinked as Sarah's voice came out of the speaker once again, much louder and more carefree than in the message she'd just left.

_"—I'll feel bad if I made you get completely sloshed and then you went out and got, like, scaffold-ed again. It's a Monday. People don't commit crimes on Mondays."_

The corner of Matt's mouth turned up as he listened to a drunken Sarah swear as she spilled her water everywhere. He'd almost forgotten she'd left him this rambling voicemail the night of their strange drinking game.

_"…I'm glad you came over tonight. I, um, I like it better…when we're on the same side. Okay. Talk to you tomorrow. Bye."_

The message continued for another minute as this Sarah—a Sarah that Matt had just by some miracle managed to earn a second (third? fourth?) chance with that night—dropped her cell phone and muttered some more curses before the line cut off.

Once again the automated voice asked if he would like to replay, save, or delete.

Matt leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and running a hand over his face. If Foggy could see him, he would undoubtedly call Matt out for what he deemed to be unnecessary Catholic masochism.

He was probably right. Exhaling tiredly, Matt addressed the automated voice command, which was patiently waiting.

"…replay message."

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

The next workday provided Sarah with nothing interesting to pass along to Matt, so she didn't call him. The day after that proved to be the same. She hadn't realized until now how much she had gotten used to him showing up on her fire escape almost every night, regardless of whether or not she had Orion-related information for him.

When Sarah entered the lobby of her apartment building after a long day at work, she found an out of order sign taped to the front of the elevator. She hit the button a few times just in case, but the doors didn't open.

_The perfect end to a perfect day_ , she thought, holding back a groan of frustration as she tiredly pushed the door to the stairwell open.

As soon as she stepped through the door, a pair of hands grabbed her by the arms from behind. For a split second, Sarah thought it was Matt, given his propensity for being conversations in just such a way. But she quickly realized the grip was far too tight, and as she was yanked towards the alleyway door on the other side of the staircase the smell of stale cigarettes and cheap rum invaded her nostrils.

She only managed to let out a short scream before she was pulled through the door and shoved against the brick wall of the alley, knocking the air out of her so that she couldn't inhale enough to make a sound.

In front of her, Ronan was as large and greasy looking as he'd ever been as he leered down at her. He'd taken his hands off her, and she immediately tried to duck around him, but he quickly shoved her back against the wall. A second later, something sharp and cold was pressed lightly against her mouth, and she looked down to see that it was a large, serrated knife. She froze at the sight of it.

"Learned my lesson the last time. This time I brought some reinforcement," Ronan said, nodding to the knife. "And made sure there were no stray staplers around for you to get your hands on."

Sarah was still focused on the knife that he was holding to her mouth, preventing her from responding to what he was saying without cutting her own lips open.

"Oh, I'm sorry, did you have something to say?" he asked mockingly. "Of course. You always do." He lifted the knife from her mouth.

"What do you want?" It wasn't the most intelligent thing she could have asked; it was pretty obvious he didn't want anything good.

"Well, after the stupid stunt you and Lauren pulled on Donovan the other night, he had a temper tantrum and said that he didn't have time to play games torturing you through your friends," Ronan told her. Her mind briefly registered that he had called Karen 'Lauren' before her attention was brought back by his next words. "I was having a lot of fun playing games, but…he managed to convince me that torturing you the old-fashioned way in person would be almost as satisfying."

Her breathing hitched as the shock of seeing Ronan started to fade and the reality of the situation began to set in. This wasn't a threatening phone call or a surprise drop-in at a public café. Ronan was here, right in front of her, and there was no one else around.

"Ah…there's that wide-eyed look I like so much. Although if you like," Ronan said, moving the blade so he was lightly tracing her bottom eyelid, "I could always make them just a _little_ wider."

Sarah tried not to look at the sharp knife that was now a fraction of a centimeter from her eye, focusing instead on the street at the end of the alleyway. She wasn't under the illusion that any passersby would see them all the way back here in the shadows, much less be able to do anything to help. But somehow it was strangely comforting to think that there were people not too far away, people happily continuing on with their evenings that were nothing like what was happening to her right now. It helped keep her from panicking.

Displeased with her attention being focused on something other than him, Ronan reached up and ran his fingers through her hair. She tried to repress a shudder as he grinned.

"So, did daddy like the arts and crafts I sent him?"

A rush of anger went through her at the reminder of the sadistic, explicit collection of photos he'd sent her father. She didn't want him to have the satisfaction of knowing how much the images had disturbed her, had made her check her locks even more than she had been doing before.

"What, that envelope you mailed him? I threw it out as soon as I saw it was your handwriting. Never even opened it," she lied harshly. "Sorry you wasted your time."

The smirk fell from Ronan's face and she felt a brief, spiteful flicker of satisfaction at his obvious disappointment.

He rapped the flat side of the knife hard against the side of her face; it didn't break the skin, but the startled yelp it instinctively elicited from her made Ronan laugh lowly.

"Doesn't matter. I can take new photos," he said, leering as he traced the line of her collarbone with the tip of his knife. "Send him those instead. But who knows? Maybe he'll get lucky, and by that point he won't even recognize it's his own daughter in the photos."

As soon as he lifted the knife from her skin to move it elsewhere, she took a deep breath and shoved his hand back towards himself as hard as she could, sending the heavy handle of the knife directly into his windpipe. She'd been aiming for his face, but the hit to the throat did the trick—he wheezed as the hit temporarily blocked his breathing, loosening his grip on her. Sarah ducked around him and ran flat out towards the end of the alleyway.

She barely saw the figure in the shadows move until he had already caught her and sent her sprawling onto the pavement. When she looked up, she was met with the sight of an unamused-looking Officer Donovan standing over her.

"You were right that she'd try to make a run for it," he called back to Ronan, who had mostly recovered and was coughing as he made his way towards them. "Didn't think it would only take about two seconds for her to get away from you, though."

Sarah's chest felt heavy as a sense of hopelessness began to settle over her. Donovan reached down and grabbed her arm, attempting to roughly yank her to her feet, but she resisted.

"Why are you helping him?" she asked him in a desperate attempt to talk her way out of this. "Y-you're a cop, there's nothing he can offer you—"

"Well, that's not entirely true. You can't offer me anything, though. And to be honest, I really don't care what happens to you. Never did. I just wanted to find out what happened to my partner. But, you know, I really don't like being pepper sprayed," he said pointedly. "Do you? Have you ever been pepper sprayed? How about tased?"

Donovan considered her for a second, then with a smirk he let go of her arm and reached for the small pouch on his belt where his police-issued taser was held. Sarah's heart raced and she tried to scramble farther away as he undid the Velcro flap and started to withdraw the taser—

"You can do that later, Donovan. We were having a chat."

The cop paused and sent an annoyed look over his shoulder, where Ronan was leaning against the wall a few yards away, twirling the knife in his hands. Sarah swallowed as Donovan rolled his eyes and moved his hand away from the taser on his belt.

"Whatever," he said.

Then, before she could blink, Donovan was no longer standing over her. There was a loud bang as his body was violently slammed into the side of the metal dumpster nearby. Sarah could have cried she was so relieved to see the black-clad vigilante in front of him, already landing several blows on Donovan's face and torso.

She scrambled to her feet as the two men fought—if it could be called that, considering how clearly outmatched the police officer was. His face was already covered in so much blood that it was difficult to see his skin underneath, and she doubted he would be conscious for much longer. Sarah didn't think she'd ever seen Matt fight like this before, moving in a fast, brutal rage rather than the calculated, efficient method that he'd used in the past.

She was barely on her feet before she felt a hand knotted in her hair, and Ronan dragged her several feet backwards. She screamed and Matt's head snapped in her direction.

Ronan moved unexpectedly quickly, swinging Sarah around so that she was in front of him and bringing the knife up to her throat as he continued backing them both away. Even from a short distance—now about twenty feet away—she could see Matt immediately go still as he heard her sharp intake of breath and the way her heartbeat skyrocketed even higher.

"Oh, no, continue what you're doing," Ronan told him. "I'll just wait over her with Sarah until you're done."

Matt threw the now unconscious Donovan aside like a rag doll and started to move towards them. But he was moving slowly, clearly very aware of the knife that was pressed to Sarah's throat.

"Stay back," Ronan warned.

"You're going to want to put that knife down."

"Yeah? Let me guess, I put the knife down and I won't get hurt?" Ronan asked mockingly.

"No. You're going to get hurt no matter what," Matt said, taking a slow step towards them. His boots made a crunching noise against some broken glass on the ground. "But if you let her go now, I won't use your knife to do it."

On the surface, Matt's voice was unnervingly calm. Between that and the way he nearly blended into the shadows, Sarah could easily see how he'd earned the Devil of Hell's Kitchen moniker. But she knew him well enough to see the telltale hints that he wasn't as confident as he was putting on: The way his jaw was clenched, the tension in his shoulders, the way his hand kept twitching almost to a fist but not quite. Ronan had the upper hand here, and unfortunately everyone was very aware of that.

"You make it sound like you're the one who'll be calling the shots," Ronan said. "But, uh…but I gotta disagree." Sarah felt his hand in her hair yank her head back sharply so that her neck was more exposed. Matt visibly tensed, stopping himself from stepping forward again. Out of the corner of her eye, Sarah could see Ronan grin wickedly at the vigilante's response. "That's what I thought."

Matt was silent, his lips parted slightly as—Sarah assumed—he analyzed the situation, tring to figure out his next move.

"Now, this…this is too much of a coincidence," Ronan said, sounding oddly delighted. "You showing up out of the blue to save this particular damsel in distress. I mean, there's a lot of damsels in Hell's Kitchen, and this one wasn't distressing very loudly. But you found us anyway."

"Saving people from sleazebags is kind of what I do," Matt replied, but Ronan wasn't accepting it.

"No, no, no, that's not it. Not with this one and her tricks," Ronan said. Sarah's stomach dropped as Ronan slowly started to laugh; it was a shaky, unhinged sound. When he spoke again his mouth was pressed against her ear, his hot breath against her skin making it clear he was addressing her now. "You really were trying to destroy me, weren't you? They said I was crazy, but look at this. The two of you are working together."

"No," Sarah said. She could feel her voice vibrate against the knife, reminding her of its uncomfortable proximity to her vocal cords. "I'm not working with anyone."

"Bullshit," Ronan said. "All you do is lie."

Matt took another step towards them, and Sarah let out a gasp of pain as Ronan pressed the blade harder against her skin. She could feel tiny rivulets of blood running down her neck.

"Hey, _hey!_ " Ronan spat out. "What did I say? Take a few steps back. And put your hands up where I can see them."

Matt hesitated, but didn't move back, and Ronan let out a frustrated growl. He dug the tip of the blade into Sarah's neck, just slightly. The cut was too shallow to reach anything important, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt—and the way her pulse jumped against the edge of his blade made her doubt he'd have to go very deep to do some real damage.

Sarah bit down on her tongue to stop from making any noise as she felt more blood run down her neck, heavier now. She didn't want to give Ronan whatever reaction he was looking for from her. But as it turned out, he was more interested in Matt's reaction. He watched the vigilante closely and he dug the blade in a little harder.

" _Alright_ ," Matt bit out abruptly, bringing both hands up into plain view and holding them open as he took a large step back. She could see the broad line of shoulders rising and falling as his breathing quickened. "Just— _stop_. Don't hurt her."

"Why not? That's what I came here to do, after all. Getting to mess with you is just a bonus. Besides, she deserves it. See, Sarah is a liar. She can't be trusted. She's power hungry; she gravitates towards whoever she thinks has the power to protect her, move her up whatever ladder she's trying to climb that day. It's how she picks her friends, her coworkers…her lovers," he added, speaking with his mouth directly against her ear once again.

Of all the reactions to have to Ronan's diatribe, Sarah felt irrationally angry that he was talking about her in the third person, as though she wasn't even there.

"If you're going to bitch about me not sleeping with you, talk to me," she snapped. "He doesn't care."

It was both a last ditch attempt to put some distance between herself and Daredevil in Ronan's mind and an attempt at getting him to pay attention to her rather than Matt. If his attention was on her, maybe Matt could figure something out, something to get them out of this—because no ideas where coming to her own mind.

"Are you sure about that?" Ronan asked, before his eyes snapped back to Matt. He continued addressing Sarah as he watched the vigilante. "Do you see the mistake you made, Sarah? He can't protect you after all." He was right. Matt was still too far away from them, and the sharp blade of the knife was pressed too tightly against her throat.

"What do you want, Ronan?" Matt asked evenly.

There was a pause during which Ronan seemed to think about it; he didn't have to think very long.

"I want to see the face of the man who ruined my career and my reputation. Who broke my arm and put half of my men in the hospital."

Matt still had his hands lifted in the air, but didn't move as he registered what Ronan was demanding.

"I mean it. Take off your mask and toss it over, or I'll open her throat up from ear to ear," Ronan threatened.

Sarah let out a short, shaky laugh even as she could feel hopeless pinpricks of tears behind her eyes. Of all the things Ronan could have wanted, he picked the one thing Matt always protected above all else. Would Ronan really cut her throat when he didn't get what he wanted? The only reason he would possibly restrain himself would be not wanting to give up the opportunity to draw the pain out longer; but the fury he was going to feel when he didn't get his way might just outweigh that.

"Last chance," Ronan said, sliding the knife over slightly so it hovered just above the pulse point on Sarah's throat.

Slowly, Matt brought his hands up to the back of his neck and curled his fingers under the edge of his mask. Sarah's eyes widened in disbelief.

And then she was looking directly into his sightless eyes, his face exposed as he tossed the black mask on the ground between them.


	26. Rising

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry, y'all! If I had known that some crazy life stuff was going to happen I never would have left you with such a bad cliffhanger! I lost my job last month, so I've been super busy applying for new jobs and having no time/energy/inspiration to write (or even to reply to comments like I normally do, so I'm sorry if yours went unanswered). So I apologize for the delay. I'd like to say that the next chapter will be up quicker, but until I get to a more stable place financially I can't really make any promises. Just know that updates are coming, even if they come slower, and that I'm absolutely not giving up on this story! 
> 
> In brighter news, make sure to check out some of the awesome new fan works for this story, including amazing new fan art by **Misery's-Toll** , an excellent Youtube reading by **hardline** , and a fantastic fan video by **onehandfeel**. As usual, all links can be found on my profile.
> 
> Again, sorry for the wait, I hope you guys are still reading and that you enjoy the new chapter! You finally get your reconciliation scene, and I made it full of extra fluff to make up for the wait. Excuse any glaring mistakes; I'll polish this chapter up a bit when I have more time.

### Chapter Twenty-Six: Rising

Sarah held her breath and silently prayed that Ronan wouldn't be able to recognize Matt in the shadows, that without the dark suit and glasses of his lawyer visage, perhaps the image wouldn't register as familiar in Ronan's eyes.

But yet again she was reminded of why she so rarely prayed.

"You've got to be kidding me," Ronan said, and to Sarah's dismay he sounded thrilled by the revelation. "I recognize you. The lawyer. _Matthew Murdock._ Oh, this is great."

Matt didn't respond, but his mouth was pressed into a tight line, and Sarah couldn't even begin to imagine what was running through his mind. Did he have a plan? Did he regret what he'd just done? Was he panicking? Or did he feel strangely distant, like she did, almost as though she wasn't really there?

"The—the one who's supposed to uphold the law is the one who's running around causing the cops so much trouble," Ronan crowed in amusement. "How did _that_ happen?"

"Wasn't satisfied with letting scum like you slip through the cracks in the system," Matt replied harshly.

"So you put on a mask and do it at night, too," Ronan mused. "Well, let's take care of that." He roughly propelled Sarah forward a few steps, not loosening his hold on her neck at all. "Be a good girl and kick that mask into the storm drain for me. He won't be needing it for now."

Sarah flicked her gaze downward, being careful not to move her head, and saw the storm drain he was referring to just a foot or two away. The mask was directly in front of them, and she grudgingly scuffed her shoe against it a few times until it slid into the dark concrete opening and disappeared from both sight and reach.

"Excellent. See, if you had been this good at following instructions when you worked for me, maybe we wouldn't have ended up here," Ronan said, satisfied that the offending mask had been disposed of. He pressed her to his chest a little closer so that she could feel something in his jacket against her back. "I brought my tranquilizer gun just in case I needed to calm you down, but look how cooperative you're being. All you needed was to be treated correctly," he sneered.

Sarah didn't say anything, her mind racing as she tried to figure out if there was any way she could reach the tranquilizer gun in his jacket before he could slit her throat—the chances seemed to be slim to none.

When he was met with silence on Sarah's end, Ronan addressed Matt once more. "Now, what I don't understand is how you managed to talk a timid mouse like this one into working with you. The Devil of Hell's Kitchen partnering up with St-St-Stuttering Sarah Corrigan."

There was no point anymore in denying that she had been working with Daredevil. They were far past the point of Ronan ever believing that.

"He didn't talk me into anything," Sarah corrected him, breathing out a laugh that bordered on hysterical as she realized how true that was. She could feel her voice vibrating against the knife as she spoke. "It was…it was my idea."

His surprised pause was an immediate reward. If Ronan was going to cut her throat tonight, she was glad that at least she could prove he didn't know her, that this pathetic image he had of her in his head wasn't who she was.

"Well, I hope it was worth it. Because once I get word to Fisk about what the two of you have done, he'll destroy you both and anyone you've ever cared about, starting with your brain dead father. And then he'll reward me beyond what you could even imagine," Ronan said, his excitement over the prospect clear in his voice. "Just think how he'll react when he hears that the sanctimonious asshole that put him in prison is the very same masked asshole that got him arrested."

As he spoke, Sarah truly started to understand that Ronan couldn't be allowed to leave that alleyway in any shape that would allow him to do what he was threatening.

"You're making this so much worse for yourself, Ronan," she said quietly.

"Excuse me? If things are going to get worse for anyone, it's _you_ , sweetheart. Well, and your blind boy toy, too," he said, turning his attention back to Matt. "Or are you even really blind?"

Sarah realized that in the dark Ronan probably couldn't make out the way that Matt's eyes never quite focused on exactly the right spot.

Matt paused. "Clearly not."

It made sense; it was less risky for Ronan to think Matt could see than for him to know about Matt's enhanced senses.

"Good. Because I'd hate for you to miss out on seeing your girlfriend like this," Ronan said, tightening his grip on her hair so that her neck was just a centimeter more exposed. Sarah tried not to vocalize the pain that jolted through her, not wanting to encourage him. But even if Ronan couldn't hear the effect of his actions on her, Matt could; she knew he was listening to her heart pounding in her ribcage, her breathing ragged and short as she tried not to inhale too deeply and press against the blade to her throat. "Would you like to know what I'm going to do to her?"

"Nothing," Sarah whispered. It took her a moment to realize that she was the one who had just spoken.

"Nothing?" Ronan repeated. "Wishful thinking, princess."

"No. Y-you like to talk, but when it comes down to getting something done...you can't do it. That's why you brought a tranquilizer gun to capture someone half your size." The words were spilling out of her mouth before she could stop them, as though the part of her that desperately wanted to hurt Ronan had overridden the part of her brain that wanted to play it safe.

"Sarah," Matt said softly, a warning note in his voice.

"You should listen to him," Ronan's breath was hot against her ear as he leaned in. "Watch what you say for once. I swear I'll break every bone in your body—"

"Just like you always said you'd do to Daredevil?" she asked, ignoring the voice in the back of her head screaming at her to be quiet, that this was too risky. "And _every time_ he still ended up kicking your ass all over Orion."

"Shut up," Ronan said, the same deadly anger in his voice that she'd heard the night he'd first attacked her.

She kept her eyes on Matt, whose hand was resting on the a few centimeters above the holster where he kept two metal billy clubs held to his leg. He tilted his head to the side slightly, tense and waiting. She hoped his silence meant he was catching on to what she was trying to do.

"Jason saw that, and that's why he fired you," she kept going.

" _Shut up_ ," Ronan growled, emphasizing his words by shaking her slightly, the knife digging into her flesh.

"You spent all this time talking about how badly you're going to hurt me. But in the end you're still afraid you won't be able to measure up. So you're taking the easy way out by just slitting my throat. No way to disappoint anyone then—"

Her words finally seemed to do the trick. With a strangled noise of frustration, Ronan whipped her around so that she was facing him, the knife dragging along her throat as he did so, and a second later he was knocked backwards and off his feet as one of the metal billy clubs struck him in the side of the head with startling accuracy. Sarah let out a ragged, pained gasp, her hands flying up to her throat. She could feel that it was wet, but the bleeding didn't seem too heavy; Ronan's anger had made him lose the focus he'd needed to keep the pressure on her throat. She doubled over slightly, trying to catch her breath as adrenaline rushed through her, making her feel light-headed.

Seconds later, she felt a gloved hand on either side of her arms, roughly pulling her upright. She caught sight of Matt, looking so out of place without his Daredevil mask on to conceal the look of panic on his face as he was hit with the strong smell of blood coming from her throat, dripping down onto the neckline of her shirt. His hands slid from her arms up to her face.

"Sarah—"

"I'm fine," she gasped out, wiping at the blood that ran down her collarbone. "It's not—I'm fine."

If there was a sight Sarah didn't think she'd ever forget, it was the look of relief on Matt's face when he heard her voice. He had one hand pressed against her bleeding neck and the other tangled in her hair, and she could feel both of them shaking slightly. He pressed his forehead to hers, just for a moment, and she caught his lips moving but couldn't make out what he was whispering.

Then he let her go, already turning around before Sarah even heard the clatter of Ronan getting up.

Ronan's demeanor had changed completely: the cockiness was gone, and although his usual scowl was still on his face, the panic in his eyes was obvious as he eyed Matt, who was closely tracking Ronan's movement with a dangerous look on his face. He took a step towards Ronan, who gripped the knife in his hand and let out an unconvincing laugh.

"Not so frightening without your mask," Ronan said, but he was taking small steps backwards even as he spoke.

"Are you sure?" Matt said softly, slowly following the other man as he backed away. "You seem pretty afraid to me."

Ronan's thoughts were clear on his face: he considered taking his chances using the knife, which he weighed in his hand, then abruptly reached for the tranquilizer gun on his belt instead, barely managing to raise it a few inches before Matt was on him, easily knocking the gun out of Ronan's hands so that it went skittering across the ground, landing a few feet away from where Sarah stood, swaying slightly and still clutching her neck.

It was difficult to see what was happening in the dark, just two large, shadowy moving quickly, and the occasional flash of the knife as Ronan repeatedly tried to embed it into Matt's chest. Sarah could hear both of them landing blows on each other, and then they abruptly swung into clear sight, illuminated by the streetlamp above as Matt slammed Ronan into the brick wall of Sarah's building. Sarah could see him grasping Ronan's wrist as Ronan struggled to bring the knife closer to Matt's face. Matt wrenched Ronan's wrist backward, wrestling the knife away from him and then—true to his word—he used the man's own weapon against him, driving the knife straight through Ronan's hand, effectively pinning it to the wall. Ronan's screams echoed off of the alleyway walls.

Matt yanked the knife out of Ronan's flesh—eliciting another scream—and threw it down the alley, breathing heavily as he slammed his fist into Ronan's face. Without the knife or the tranquilizer gun, Ronan truly stood no chance, and as Sarah watched she couldn't manage to muster any sympathy for him.

Maybe it was that lack of sympathy that tempted karma away from their side.

Ronan whipped his head forward, connecting his forehead with Matt's and knocking him back a step. Matt recovered quickly, grabbing Ronan by the shoulders and hurling him against the opposite wall of the alley, where he hit the brick with such force that he went sprawling to the ground, landing next to Donovan's unconscious form.

That was where things spun out of control.

Moving quicker than either Sarah or Matt could have anticipated, Ronan scrambled over Donovan, grabbing the cop's gun out of his holster. He used his good hand to fire a shot blindly in Matt's direction, missing by over a yard as he scrambled to his feet. He pointed the gun at Matt again, actually aiming this time, and at such close proximity—

Sarah lurched to the ground, snatching up the tranquilizer gun that lay nearby and aiming it at Ronan. She pulled the trigger before she could think. The dart fired with surprising force, and seconds later it was embedded deeply in Ronan's shoulder.

There was a beat during which all three of them were still, registering what had just happened. Then, to Sarah's relief, Ronan's grip on the gun in his hand slackened, causing him to drop it. His mouth drooped oddly as the tranquilizer took immediate effect. Sarah held her breath, waiting to see if he would lose consciousness. Matt stood still as well, breathing heavily as Ronan's eyes rolled back in his head. He slumped over, and Sarah thought he was out.

Then his body twitched—once, twice, three times—over and over again. Sarah watched in horror as he began to convulse on the ground. She couldn't understand what was happening—the darts weren't strong enough to cause this, were they? It was only supposed to knock him out.

"Holy shit," Sarah breathed out. She couldn't move her feet as Matt darted forward and dropped to his knees next to Ronan, roughly turning him over and swearing under his breath as the other man continued convulsing. "What's happening to him?"

Matt started to reply, but stopped short of speaking as Ronan abruptly ceased moving completely.

Both of them waited to see if he would begin twitching again, but he lay still.

"Is—is he…?" Sarah stared wide-eyed at the unmoving man on the ground

Matt was quiet for a few seconds.

"…there's no heartbeat," he said finally, standing up.

"What? I—I didn't—" she stammered, still in shock. "It was just one dart. That girl in Orion got hit with two a-and she didn't die."

"Tranquilizer is just like any other street-level drug," Matt said, his tone giving away his own disbelief at the situation. "You don't get any guarantee that the dosages will all be the same." He turned his head to her, speaking more forcefully now. "And if he had used it on you, you'd be dead, too."

Sarah took a few steps closer to Ronan, dropping the tranquilizer gun next to him with a clatter as she tried to process what was happening. Her mind jumped from thought to thought, going through all of the horrible consequences that could come of this.

"W-we should see if he has a burner phone on him," Sarah said faintly. She didn't think there were any more people involved with Ronan, but they needed to be sure, especially since she had just— _No_. She shook her head fiercely, not thinking about that. "I'll check Donovan."

Sarah stumbled over to the unconscious police officer and dropped to her knees next to him to check for a burner phone. Her gaze swept over his face, which barely resembled a face anymore—Matt had worked him over so thoroughly that it was just a mess of blood and broken flesh. Even though she knew that Matt would have said something if he'd heard Donovan's heart stop, she had to double check for her own sanity. She slowly reached out and pressed her fingers to his throat, closing her eyes in relief when she immediately felt a pulse.

She was just about to pull her hand away and reach into his jacket pocket when she heard the loud sound of a car engine at the end of the alleyway, and both she and Donovan were illuminated by headlights. She swore and shielded her eyes, squinting into the lights and just catching sight of flashing red and blue before she heard a loud voice call out, the person attached to it still concealed by the blindingly bright headlights.

"Hands up!"

Sarah immediately put both of her hands in the air, staring wide-eyed now at the silhouettes of two police officers who emerged from either side of the squad car, both with their guns drawn. Were they actual cops, or did they work for someone who wouldn't mind putting a bullet through her head? They were still a good fifty feet away, slowly making their way towards her.

She could see Matt out of the corner of her eye as he took a step closer to her. He and Ronan were still concealed from sight behind the dumpster—for now. As soon as the police got closer they would spot him, and even without the mask they would immediately know who he was.

"Matt," she whispered, not looking over at him as the police continued coming closer. "G-go. You have to go."

"I'm not leaving you here," he whispered back fiercely.

"You _have_ to," she hissed between her teeth. "They'll arrest you if you don't. _Go_."

She could tell by Matt's silence that he knew she was right. There was nothing he could do to help her without his mask on, and his presence being discovered would only make things much worse. She continued facing forward, not wanting to appear as though she was talking to anyone, so she didn't see Matt melt away into the shadows, but she could feel it when he was no longer there.

Sarah squinted, trying to get a better look at the police officers that were approaching her. One of the officers was a blonde woman that Sarah had never seen before, but the other one she recognized—it was the desk sergeant who had been at the station the day she'd gone to meet with McDermott and turn down his bribe. Mahoney, she thought his name was. She hoped that he wouldn't recognize her as well.

"Jesus," the blonde officer breathed, and it dawned on Sarah how crazy she must look, kneeling on the ground next to an unconscious police officer, with her neck and shirt covered in blood. "That's...that's Donovan."

"Call a bus. Tell them there's an officer down," Mahoney replied, craning his neck to peer into the darkness at the end of the alley before addressing Sarah guardedly. "Just you back here?"

"N-no." Sarah shook her head, then nodded towards where Ronan—it was only Ronan's body now, she reminded herself—was sprawled.

Mahoney kept his weapon out as he inspected the area behind the dumpster. Sarah could already hear ambulance sirens close by—it was amazing how much faster they managed to get to crime scenes when a police officer was the one needing medical help.

Once the paramedics arrived, things passed in a bit of blur. The female officer patted Sarah down, and once she was satisfied that Sarah had no weapons and didn't pose an active threat, she provided her with a large roll of gauze to stem the bleeding from her throat. Sarah held the gauze there as she was questioned by Mahoney, while in the background the paramedics quickly tended to both Ronan and Donovan.

"What's your name?"

"Sarah Corrigan."

Brett frowned as he wrote the name down, glancing up from his notebook to take a closer look at her. For a moment, she was positive that he recognized her—either from the interrogation room or her meeting with Donovan—but if he did, he didn't mention it. It seemed odd to her.

"Can you tell me who that is?" Mahoney asked, nodding towards one of the ambulances, where Ronan's body was being removed from the scene.

"Yes. His name is Ronan Greenfield," Sarah answered shakily, mentally rehearsing the story she had come up with and including as much truth has she could. "He's my old coworker. He's, um…he's been following me for a while now, and he attacked me in the—in the stairwell and dragged me outside. That police officer heard me screaming a-and came to help me."

Mahoney paused the notes he was scribbling in his small notebook and cast a confused look back at Donovan, who was being checked over by the paramedics. Sarah craned her neck over Mahoney's shoulder to get a better view as well. They weren't rushing him into an ambulance, so she assumed his injuries were mostly non-life threatening, despite his bloody appearance.

"Sorry, you say _that_ police officer came to help you?" he clarified doubtfully.

Sarah blinked. It seemed as though Donovan's reputation at the police department was not that of a warmhearted do-gooder.

"Um…yeah. Ronan attacked him, and…that's how they both got hurt."

"And how is it that Ronan ended up…?"

"I didn't get a good look at what was happening," Sarah said, trying to keep things as vague as she could. "I know he was trying to shoot D—the police officer with the tranquilizer dart, and…somehow he ended up hitting himself with it instead."

It wasn't the strongest story in the world, but it wasn't totally implausible. She held her breath as Mahoney wrote down what she said, hoping he believed her. They had no reason to arrest her right now, but they could still detain her. And who knew what would happen once she was in the police station?

"Not the first time some asshole has done himself in on accident," he said finally, shaking his head. He didn't seem to notice Sarah's relief as he continued asking her follow-up questions: Where had she been coming from, what time had she gotten to the apartment, why was Ronan following her, did it seem like he and Donovan had known each other? She only lied where she had to, not wanting to spawn a story too large to keep track of.

"Okay. I think that's all the questions I have for now," he said after a while. Before he could say anything else, his partner—who had been conversing with the paramedics near the mouth of the alley—called out his name. He walked over to her, conversing with both her and the paramedic as the other two medics loaded Donovan into the ambulance for transport to the hospital. Mahoney glanced over his shoulder back at Sarah, and a few moments later both he and the paramedic returned to stand in front of her while his partner remained behind.

"Will, um…will he be alright?" she asked, hoping she sounded curious rather than suspicious.

"Should be. It'll probably be a few days in the hospital before he'll be able to give any sort of statement, though," Mahoney said. He nodded to the man standing beside him. "Thought you might want to get that cut on your neck looked at."

The paramedic was a tall, red-headed man who looked nice enough as he smiled at her. There was nothing threatening about him, but as he reached out to check the cut on her neck Sarah found herself instinctively stumbling back, shakily holding a hand out in front of her as her feet seemed to move of their own accord.

Mahoney raised his eyebrows at her in surprise. The paramedic didn't appear to share his surprise; Sarah supposed he dealt with reactions like this often.

"N-no. No, thank you," she said, looking from Mahoney to the paramedic with wide eyes. "Um…I can take care of it."

"Are you sure?" Mahoney asked skeptically, peering more closely at the wound on her neck. She moved her hair so that it fell in front of the actual cut, although it did nothing to obscure the blood-stained collar of her shirt. "That's a nasty cut to try to work with yourself. Might need stitches."

"I'm sure," Sarah said, her stomach turning at the thought of a stranger touching her right now. "Th-thanks, though."

After exchanging looks with Mahoney, the paramedic simply nodded and left them alone.

With a sigh, Mahoney dug in his inner jacket pocket until he fished out two small, white business cards. He handed her the first one. "This is my card. I might be in touch to ask you some more questions, so don't leave town." Sarah nodded and accepted the card. He handed her the second card, pausing for a second before continuing. "The other card is for if you decide you need medical attention. We have clinics you can go to. Anonymously. And you can call me or come by the precinct if you're interested in any other resources."

Sarah bit her lip as she looked down at the business card, which was printed with an address and phone number of a clinic a few blocks away.

"Thanks," she said quietly. Then, before the officer could say anything else, she hastily skirted around him, hurrying out of the alleyway without looking back as she entered the apartment lobby.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

Back in the alleyway, Brett Mahoney had just snapped his notebook closed and was about to follow his partner, who was already halfway back to the squad car. He went to slip the notebook back into his pocket but fumbled, instead dropping it on the ground. With a sigh he knelt down to pick it up, and as he did something caught his eye: a piece of dark fabric caught just inside the opening of the storm drain a few feet away. There was nothing immediately conspicuous about it, but if there was anything that made Brett a good police officer it was his ability to trust his instincts, listening to the subconscious side of his mind that knew something was up without needing to stop and analyze how he knew.

He reached out and plucked the fabric from the drain. It was probably just a scarf, or an old hand towel—whatever it was, he probably shouldn't be touching it. But as he held it up, he saw that it wasn't either of those things Instead it was a black mask, simple and undecorated, knotted in the back with two long strands hanging down the back. He recognized it immediately, just as any other cop in Hell's Kitchen would: it was the mask that normally obscured the face of the man commonly known as the Devil of Hell's Kitchen.

Glancing back at his partner, who had yet to notice what he was doing, Brett made a quick decision. Rather than alert her to what he'd found, he folded the small mask up and slipped it into his jacket pocket. If Daredevil had been there that night, it complicated things. It meant that Daredevil might have some connection to Donovan, or even to McDermott. And he was fairly certain that Sarah Corrigan had a connection to all three.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

Sarah was glad that she at least managed to hold herself together until she was safely inside her own apartment. She didn't recall the walk from the alleyway up the stairwell to her floor, just the click of the deadbolt as she locked the door behind her.

Sarah leaned back heavily against the door, closing her eyes as she tried to catch her breath. At first it seemed like she was just out of breath from climbing five flights of stairs, but after a few seconds of not being able to inhale all the way she suspected that wasn't it. She didn't even realize she was sliding down the door until she found herself sitting on the floor. A hot, claustrophobic feeling began creeping over her, like her apartment had gotten smaller and warmer somehow. Her heartbeat felt strange, like it was trying to speed up and slow down all at the same time.

With her eyes still closed, she didn't register that there was someone kneeling next to her until she felt a hand on her arm, and she instinctively flinched away from the touch, nearly hitting the back of her head on the door from how violently she recoiled. The hand retracted immediately.

Obviously it was Matt. But for some reason she couldn't make herself look, and without being able to see that it really was Matt crouching next to her some irrational corner of her mind was absolutely convinced it might not be him.

"Hey, hey. I'm not hurting you. You're bleeding, Sarah."

Sarah nodded tightly, finally forcing herself to wrench her eyes open. And there was Matt, kneeling closer than she had expected, his expression dark and tense as his sightless eyes flicked over her. His presence didn't make the panic recede, but it did give her something to try to focus on.

The warm, claustrophobic feeling only got worse, and she yanked at the neckline of her shirt to give herself more space to inhale.

"It's too hot in here. It's too hot, I—I can't breathe," she stammered. She tightly squeezed his hand, which at some point had made its way into her own, although she didn't know if it was him or her that had reached out first.

"Okay. Okay, hang on. I'll be right back. Alright?"

Sarah nodded her head a fraction, and then Matt was no longer next to her.

Her uncomfortable awareness of the feel of her shirt against her skin only grew. The neckline wasn't particularly tight-fitting around her neck, but it felt like it was getting tighter and tighter, weighing her down. She fumbled with the buttons on the front of her blouse, struggling to control her shaking hands. Her fingers felt clumsy and numb, like if she couldn't physically see them attached to her hand she might believe they weren't even there.

Matt returned a few seconds later and kneeled down beside her again, a glass of water in one hand, a washcloth and a small ice pack in the other.

Sarah was still trying to make her fingers work properly, and had only managed to get one of the buttons undone. The coppery scent of blood that covered the shirt made her feel sick, and she felt like it was going to strangle her if she didn't get it off.

She felt Matt's hand settle over her own, gently stilling her frantic movements. Then he quickly and nimbly began undoing the buttons for her without saying a word. His blank eyes were directed somewhere over shoulder as he made his way down the line of buttons, until he unfastened the last one, allowing her to hastily shrug the shirt off. She didn't feel any cooler in just her camisole, but the openness of not having something around her neck helped immensely.

"Come here," Matt said, gently leaning her forward and sweeping her hair to the side. He pressed something cold to the back of her neck and she inhaled sharply at the contact. But it helped—although she didn't know if it was the cold radiating from the ice pack or the reassuring hand that Matt kept on her arm that was making the difference.

She was fairly certain that he was talking to her, lowly and evenly, but she hoped he wasn't saying anything important because she wasn't able to focus on the words. After a few minutes, her breathing began to return to normal, and the invisible iron hand that had closed around her chest lessened its grip. Slowly, she sat up straight again.

Matt's brow was creased, but he didn't say anything as he waited. Sarah wasn't sure how long he had sat there with her. After a few minutes, he held out the damp washcloth he'd brought in from the kitchen, and she took it from him.

"You took your mask off," she whispered as she pressed the cloth to her neck.

"You thought I wouldn't?" Matt's eyes were serious and sad.

A guilty wince flashed across her face. She had thought that, and it made her feel even guiltier that she had been wrong. Taking off his mask was huge—she could barely comprehend the magnitude of that decision. She'd honestly never thought he'd reveal himself for any reason at all, much less for her. But she wasn't sure how to put that into words, and her silence felt heavy between them.

"I don't know."

"You really thought that I'd let Ronan—" Matt broke off. "You thought I'd just let him hurt you?"

"No, that's not…" She bit her lip, not sure what she had thought, really. "I just…I figured there was a line you wouldn't cross."

Matt's face was unreadable, and she wondered if it was because he wasn't sure where that line was either.

"I'm so sorry, Matt," she whispered, not sure if she was apologizing for what he'd had to do for her or for her lack of faith that he would do it. Maybe it was a combination of both. "I'm sorry you had to do that."

He screwed up his face in dismay at her apology as he shook his head. "No. Don't be sorry. You're safe, and Ronan's…he's out of the picture. He can't do anything with the information."

"But you didn't know that," she countered, still giving him a disbelieving look. "Y-you had no way to know what would happen when you took your mask off—"

"I knew that he wasn't lying when he said he would slit your throat," Matt interrupted quietly. He looked as though he might add something to that, but instead he shrugged, as though that was explanation enough.

Maybe it was because she was still lingering on the edge of a panicked state, but she couldn't understand why Matt wasn't upset with her, why she wasn't getting part two of the outburst Matt had started in the hospital. This time she actually felt like she deserved it.

"You were right," she said, and at Matt's questioning look she elaborated. "About me. I—I got your friends hurt. And now your identity got exposed because of me. Everything that you were so afraid of when we first met…you were right."

"No. I wasn't," he said with a firm shake of his head.

"I blew your cover."

" _You_ didn't do anything. I made a choice."

She looked down. "Would you still think it was the right choice if Ronan had escaped and gone to Fisk? There would have been no coming back from that—"

"There's no coming back from having your throat slit, either. One scenario I could try to do damage control for, the other is permanent. Of course I picked you." Matt hesitated, seeming to debate himself before adding, "I'd…pick you over most things, when it comes down to it. Whether you believe that or not."

Sarah's head was still spinning from adrenaline and panic, and hearing that only made her lightheaded in a different way. Did she believe that? Did he believe that? Could he just for once be predictable so she could figure out where they stood?

She looked at him for a long moment, then exhaled deeply in something akin to exasperation. She shook her head as she brought her hand up to trace the bruise that was slowly forming along his cheekbone. "You are so confusing."

Matt gave a crooked smile at that, small wrinkles forming at the corners of his eyes as he leaned into her touch and a bit of the worry lifted from his face. "I know. Sorry about that."

"I guess there are worse things to be."

"Yeah, maybe." He waited a beat, then asked, "Do you…want to stay here on the floor, or…"

Sarah blinked. She'd almost forgotten that they were still sitting on the floor in front of the entrance to her apartment.

"Right. No, we should probably get off the floor."

She grabbed the door handle and used it to pull herself up, feeling as exhausted as if she had just run several miles. Matt stayed close by as she got up.

"First aid kit?" he inquired once she was on her feet.

"Um…on top of the fridge," she said tiredly.

Matt nodded and disappeared. While he was gone, Sarah pulled the washcloth away from where she had been pressing it to the side of her neck and tried not to look at how much blood was on it. _I should buy darker towels_ , she noted absently.

When Matt came back into the room, he was weighing the kit in his hand experimentally, his head cocked to the side.

"You've upgraded," he noted as he took a seat on the couch next to her and set the kit down between them. It was new—she had bought it as a precaution shortly after getting hit with a hammer—and significantly larger than the one she'd had before.

"Seemed like a good idea. Between the two of us, someone is always injured, and I figured at some point Band-Aids weren't going to do the trick."

"Good call," he agreed.

Taking the damp cloth from her, Matt held it to her neck with much more pressure than she had been applying, nearly to the point of discomfort but not quite. She supposed the half-hearted way she'd been doing it probably hadn't been doing much to help stem the bleeding, but her mind was so focused on other things that she didn't really care. Her thoughts jumped from one thing to another—Ronan's heart stopping—Donovan being wheeled into an ambulance—Mahoney's suspicious expression when she'd lied to him—and back to the man in front of her.

"What are we going to do about Donovan?" she asked, her voice sounding crackly and tired as it broke the silence. "There's no way he's going to think it was just a coincidence you showed up in that alley tonight."

Matt sighed heavily. "I agree. But it seems like he's limited in who he can tell, to be honest. If he talks to Jason he'd have to admit to working with Ronan. And he can't say very much to the police without implicating himself. Even if he does tell them…the cops have no real reason to draw any connection between the two of us based on that."

"Right. I guess they can't really get suspicious of every person Daredevil saves." It seemed a little more real now, the things that Matt did when he went out in the mask. Before she had always pictured him as just fighting faceless, nameless bad guys that were making Hell's Kitchen more dangerous. But now she thought about the victims that Matt had saved, and how they must have felt. That feeling of hopelessness and total fear—that's what he was out there saving people from. "But Jason can. If word gets to him."

"Right. And if he talks to Jason he'd have to admit to working with Ronan."

"If Jason even let him get that far," Sarah said, focusing on not picturing the hammer that Jason had embedded in McDermott's throat.

"Donovan probably won't be up to giving a statement any time soon, right? I mean, with the…" Sarah gestured vaguely to her face.

Matt shook his head, a hard look on his face. "No. Probably not."

"Can't say I feel very bad for him," Sarah admitted.

"Yeah, well…I should have gone after Ronan first," Matt said, sounding frustrated with his decision.

Sarah didn't really want to talk about Ronan too much just yet; she was having difficulty figuring out whether or not she felt guilty about her part in his death, and she definitely wasn't ready to hear whether or not Matt deemed her guilty. But her curiosity about Matt's actions in the alleyway won out.

"Why didn't you?" she asked.

His jaw ticked as he pressed the cloth to her skin once more.

"Donovan was the one with his hands on you when I got there," he said darkly.

Sarah thought back to her strange conversation with Foggy the night she'd been laid up with a concussion; specifically, the point he'd made about Matt being possessive of people he saw as his to protect. She was starting to see the truth in his point now.

Matt lifted the cloth from her neck and set it aside. Sarah watched with her usual mild fascination as he skimmed his fingertips over the contents of the first aid kit, not hesitating as he blindly selected the items he needed: a bottle of disinfecting alcohol and a sealed packet of linen cloths.

"This'll sting," he said, holding the cloth up to the mouth of the alcohol bottle and tipping it to the side.

"I know the drill by now," she said.

Matt lifted her chin, tilting her head to the side to better expose her neck, then slowly pressed the alcohol-soaked cloth to her cut. Even knowing that it was coming, Sarah still jerked slightly at the sharp stinging sensation, and Matt gently held his hand to the other side of her neck to keep her still.

"Sorry," he murmured, the warmth of his hand reaching halfway around her neck and his thumb idly running up and down the underside of her jaw. "Sorry."

"It's okay," she breathed out.

Sarah watched him closely, noticing the way his brow creased in concentration as he carefully tried to clean the cut without hurting her. She tried to wrap her mind around the fact that the same hands that had just smashed Donovan's face to the point of being nearly unidentifiable were now touching her as lightly as if she were made of glass.

While Sarah was lost in her thoughts, Matt was busy inspecting her neck with an unhappy look on his face. His head was cocked to the side and his fingers lingered a few centimeters from the cut. She wondered what he could possibly be picking up on.

"What?"

He hesitated.

"I…think this is going to need stitches," he said with an apologetic wince.

"Stitches?" Sarah repeated, her eyes widening in alarm. "On my neck? I'm going to look like Frankenstein."

"Just a few. Two or three, tops. But it won't close up properly without them."

"Well…how can you be sure? Maybe it looks worse than it is," she tried. Matt cocked a brow, and she lamely added, "…metaphorically."

"This might shock you," he said dryly. "But I sometimes get hurt on the job. I'm pretty good by now at figuring out which injuries need stitches."

Sarah groaned, leaning back against the couch cushions. Getting stitches—on her neck of all places—was the last thing she wanted to deal with right now. Finally she sighed in reluctant defeat.

"So…I have to call Claire and bother her again? I don't think she's gotten over the whole concussion thing yet."

"Or I can do it, if you want. You have the supplies I need," he said, gesturing to her recently upgraded first aid kit. "I can't promise that I'll rival Claire in terms of neatness, but…"

After the intense events of the night—some of which Sarah had yet to even begin processing—the idea of remaining here with Matt was much more appealing than going anywhere. She didn't really want to be anywhere other than safe in her apartment right now, and she definitely didn't feel like talking to anyone but her present company. As kind as Claire was, there was only one person who understood the state she was in right now, and he was sitting right next to her.

"I'd rather you do it."

"Alright," Matt said, nodding towards the couch they were sitting on. "Lie down. The angle will be easier to work with."

As she laid back on the couch, Matt sifted through the items in the first aid kit, withdrawing the necessary tools. Sarah frowned at the sight of the small, sharp suture needle.

"You'll be able to tell if you're about to, like, puncture something, right?" she asked warily, her nervous tendency to babble kicking in. "I mean I guess bleeding out on my couch would be better than in an alleyway, but if I had to pick I'd rather not do it at all, probably."

Matt leaned over her, tilting her head back against the armrest and putting his fingers to her neck to orient the location of the cut.

"You'll need to stop talking for this part," he said, giving her a pointed look.

The needle hurt as much as she'd expected as it went through the tender skin on her neck, and Sarah gripped the edge of the couch tightly, focusing on keeping calm. Matt remained quiet for the most part, concentrating on the task at hand. Although she would have appreciated the distraction that conversation would have provided, Sarah vastly preferred that he keep his focus on not stabbing the needle into the wrong part of her neck. He worked quickly, murmuring the occasional apology when she would tense up at the more painful parts.

Matt worked quickly—though not as quickly as Claire—and it wasn't long before he was done with the few stitches. But it had felt like a century, and Sarah could only imagine how long it must have felt like for Matt the night she had stitched him up. That had been a much larger wound, and she had been much slower and messier.

"Alright. That's it," he said finally.

"Thanks," she said, wincing as she slowly sat up. "For this, and…for earlier."

"Don't thank me," Matt said as he started repacking the first aid kit. "You wouldn't have had a knife to your throat at all if he hadn't been using you against me."

Sarah thought of the way that Ronan had traced along her skin with the serrated knife, taking pleasure in her inability to move away from him. She had to suppress a shiver at the memory.

"Right," she said, shaking off the feeling and reminding herself that Ronan no longer posed a threat. "Before you showed up and ruined it, Ronan and I were having a really friendly chat."

Matt cocked an eyebrow, as unimpressed by her deflective joke as she was by his incessant guilt complex.

"You shouldn't have been in that situation to begin with," he said firmly. "I should have been there quicker."

"The reason you weren't there was because I asked you not to be," she reminded him, then something occurred to her. "How did you end up showing up there anyway?"

There was a short pause.

"Ah." Matt scratched the back of his head, opening and closing his mouth with uncharacteristic awkwardness. "…I was passing by."

The forced nonchalance in his tone caught her attention, and she narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously.

"…passing by how often?" she asked. When he didn't answer, her eyebrows shot up in realization. "Have you been _spying_ on me?"

" _Not_ spying," Matt corrected her, casting his eyes towards the ceiling as he searched for a better description. "I was…occasionally checking in."

"Checking in implies that both parties know it's happening."

"I know. I know, I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to—" Matt fumbled his words, and Sarah softened slightly when she saw how self-conscious he was about the situation. It was especially fascinating coming from the same man who had unashamedly threatened to watch her every move when they first met. "I've just been…tuning in for a few seconds when I'm close by. Not so much listening to you as the things going on around you. Just to make sure you were safe. I wasn't…you made it clear you didn't want me coming by anymore. I wasn't going to intrude, but I couldn't just leave you here alone not knowing if you were alright or not."

Sarah looked down, knowing that she should probably be more upset about the invasion of privacy than she was.

"I guess…that means you got my voicemail, then," she said.

"Yeah," Matt said, that same forced casualness back his voice, but this time accompanied by an unmistakable sadness that made her heart twist. "I got your voicemail."

She bit her lip as she tried to figure out how to tell him—or if she even should tell him—that she hadn't been trying to hurt him with that message; she'd only been trying to protect herself. Now even that motivation seemed foreign to her, given the current situation, and she wished she could take it back. But obviously she couldn't.

When she didn't say anything, Matt did.

"I've been…letting my friends down lately. I know if I want to protect the city, I should at least be able to keep my own people out of danger. And I keep failing at it. Tonight it was with you. The other night it was with Karen. I tried so hard to keep her away from the things I deal with as Daredevil, and she ended up in the middle of it anyway. And a lot of that is my fault for not being honest with her. I panicked, and…I hurt someone important to me," he said quietly. "You didn't deserve that. You…haven't deserved any of the shit I've put you through, actually. You had every right in the world to cut things off. So do Karen and Foggy, really."

_But they haven't_ , Sarah added mentally, wincing guiltily. She was the only one who had bailed, after specifically promising him that she wouldn't. The thought that his reaction that night had been based in panic rather than anger had never even crossed her mind. She knew better than anyone how panic could take a person over, control their actions until it died down. That wasn't what was still bothering her. After all, she reminded herself, he'd also promised her that he would be on her side, and he hadn't followed through either.

"…but I'm not the same as Karen and Foggy," she said, more as a statement than a question. To her disappointment, Matt didn't correct her. "So...what am I?"

"I don't know," he said honestly. "I don't want to lie to you. You're right, you're not the same. And I could probably assume you don't see me the same way you see Lauren."

Sarah blinked, her mind flashing to her best friend: blonde, loud, and bubbly, incredibly crass and always eager to chatter for a few hours about anything under the sun. Cocking her head, Sarah eyed the person in front of her: Quiet, intense Matt, all bloody knuckles and off-center eye contact and dry humor. She couldn't help but let out a small laugh at the comparison.

"No," she admitted with a shake of her head. "Not really."

"Whatever you and I are, it's…complicated. A lot more so than my friendship with Foggy or Karen, especially given our…unique history. And your familiarity with a side of me that the two of them have never really had to deal with. If…that's not something that you want to deal with, I'd understand that."

Sarah looked at him for a long moment, then cast her eyes up at the ceiling, shaking her head slightly in disbelief. Matthew Murdock had to be the only person she'd ever met who could do everything he had done for her tonight—from taking off his mask to stitching up her neck—and still think he might not have earned any forgiveness.

Bringing her gaze back down to him, she felt a rush of affection—combined with a good amount of exasperation—for the vigilante in front of her, with his ruffled hair and concerned eyes. Without thinking, she leaned forward and flung her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly. He let out a soft grunt of surprise upon impact, clearly not expecting her to throw her entire weight onto him like she did. But he took only a second before wrapping his arm tightly around her waist, bringing his other hand up to cup the nape of her neck, weaving his fingers into her hair.

"You're kind of dumb for a lawyer, you know," she muttered into his ear, and she felt his shoulders move as he laughed.

"You're not the first to tell me that."

Sarah wondered if they would ever find a middle ground between the two extremes they always seemed to live in. Something in between being at each other's throats and this strange, intense intimacy that was so easy to fall into with him. She turned her head and pressed her lips to his temple, closing her eyes and lingering there for a moment before finally letting go of him and leaning back.

Matt's eyes were dark and focused somewhere around her mouth as she pulled away. He abruptly cleared his throat, leaning back a little farther.

"I should go. Let you get some sleep," Matt said.

The idea of being alone was unappealing, to say the least—and for once not because of any concerns over her safety. For the moment, the events of the last few hours didn't quite feel real yet, and Sarah didn't want to be by herself when that reality began to crash down on her. Would she feel guilty tomorrow about her role in Ronan's death? Would the fragile lie she gave the police wake her up in the middle of the night?

"You could stay," she said softly, the words spilling out before she could really think about it. Matt tilted his head, surveying her seriously, but didn't say anything yet. "If you want to, I mean. You…you can stay here tonight."

She wasn't sure why she offered; there was no real reason why Matt would choose to stay. If he was going to get across the city without being seen, going at night was obviously the smarter choice. The most immediate threats to Sarah's safety were either dead or hospitalized. Her injuries were minor and had already been taken care of. In fact, the more she thought about it the more foolish she felt for asking.

"You don't have to," she added quickly. "I'm fine here, obviously. I just…if you're, like, tired, and you don't want to parkour around rooftops, or—"

"Yeah," he interrupted her quietly. "I'll stay."

He ran a hand through his hair tiredly, then stretched his arm out, letting it rest against the back of the couch. He leaned his head back, seemingly so exhausted that he was content to fall asleep right where he was. Sarah knew she should go to her own room and give Matt space in case he decided to stretch out on the couch to get more comfortable. But after everything that had just happened, something tired and raw inside of her was telling her to let her guard down for once—just once—and not overanalyze everything.

She curled her legs up next to her and shifted slightly, closing the few inches that separated them so that her side was pressed against his as she rested her head on his chest.

_Rude hostess tips 101: Invite someone to stay over and then don't let them comfortably lie down._

But Matt didn't seem to mind. He slid his arm down from the back of the couch, curling it around her waist. The weight of it against her was comforting.

They didn't say anything else, but there wasn't total silence. For once, Sarah could hear Matt's heartbeat as clearly as he could always hear hers. She closed her eyes and listened to it beating steadily underneath the rise and fall of his chest as she fell asleep.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

Big life events, much like celebrity deaths, often come in threes. With Ronan dead and Sarah's connection to Matt blown, that still left one big event to happen, and it didn't take its time arriving.

Of all the things Sarah thought she would wake up to the next morning, an ecstatic phone call from Greg informing her that Lauren had gone into labor overnight was not one of them. After so many months of waiting and anticipating, in the end Sarah couldn't believe she had missed the actual big event. The couple had held off on calling Sarah right away, supposedly wanting to give Lauren time to rest, although Sarah suspected part of it was Lauren having figured out that the middle of the night wasn't the safest time to get in touch with her best friend anymore.

After a rushed goodbye to Matt and a quick stop by the hospital gift shop to purchase a large, cheesy stuffed animal, Sarah found herself sitting on the edge of a hospital bed next to an exhausted but excited Lauren and a significantly less exhausted but equally excited Greg, all of them peering down at the baby in Lauren's arms.

"She's so quiet," Sarah noted of the sleeping infant, then squinted at Lauren suspiciously. "Are you sure this one is yours?"

Lauren tilted her head, eying the baby speculatively. "Sure, yeah. I mean, they all kind of look the same at this stage, so it's a toss up, really. You're pretty cute, whosever you are," she said, tapping a finger against the baby's tiny nose.

Sarah shook her head and looked around the room, noting a conspicuous absence of two people she hadn't been looking forward to seeing.

"Where are your mom and Cecilia?"

"They left!" Greg answered a bit too enthusiastically. Tempering his tone, he added, "For a bit. I think they went to get some non-hospital food."

"We're taking advantage of them being gone to decide on a name. I want something with some drama to it," Lauren said, to no one's surprise.

"And I'd like something that won't get him shoved into lockers when he gets to secondary school," Greg said.

"That's not a thing that happens, Greg," Lauren argued. "You've based your entire opinion of American high schools off of John Hughes movies."

"You wouldn't know because you were a cheerleader in high school."

"Kids don't even fit into lockers anymore because they make the lockers so tiny—"

"Oh, you've tried shoving a child into a locker lately, then?"

Sarah interrupted their bickering, which she knew could go on for a while.

"—I'm sorry, did you guys say 'him?'" she clarified uncertainly. "It's a boy?"

They both nodded in affirmation.

"Lauren, you…definitely told everyone it was a girl," Sarah said slowly, wondering if she was going crazy.

"I did do that, yes," Lauren agreed.

"All of the baby shower invitations said 'It's a girl!'"

"Mhm."

"And the balloons, and the cake," Sarah continued. "Everything you got at the shower is pink."

"Yeah. Well, I never actually checked with the doctor per se, but it really _felt_ like a girl. I mean, I was getting those vibes. I think maybe it was because I had been watching a lot of Gilmore Girls, though. But, well…" Lauren shrugged, unconcerned.

Sarah laughed disbelievingly "So, what are you going to do with all of the bibs and onesies that people got you that say things like 'Mommy's Little Princess?'"

Lauren looked vaguely offended. "Um, he _is_ my little princess, and he'll wear them, obviously."

"Did you know about this?" Sarah asked Greg.

"Probably should have been a bit more on top of that, looking back on it," Greg agreed, rubbing his chin. "Next time."

"Next time?" Lauren said, sending him a sharp look. " _No_." She turned back to Sarah. "Anyway, help us think of some boy names, because all I had ready were girl names and Greg has locker-stuffing anxiety."

"Oh, um…" Sarah searched for a name, caught a bit off guard. "What do you have so far?"

"I like Alexander," Greg said. "It's a solid name."

"It's boring," Lauren dismissed. "What about Ian?"

"No. I have an uncle named Ian who has terrible luck. Name's cursed," Greg said somberly. "How about Matthew?"

"Oh, that's nice," Lauren agreed, perking up a bit.

"No," Sarah cut in abruptly. They both looked at her strangely. "Uh, no. I don't…like it. It's confusing."

"It's…a confusing name?" Greg asked.

"Yeah. Well, I mean, there's just… _so_ many Matthews in the world already. Matthew…Perry. Matthew Broderick. Matthew McConaughey—that guy's kind of bizarre, right? Do we need one more Matthew? I don't think we do. It would be weird. Really weird. I am…vetoing it," she said resolutely.

"Do you get veto power over the baby name?" Greg asked suspiciously, then looked over at Lauren. "Does she get veto power?"

Lauren considered it. "Seems like it. How many vetoes do you get here?"

"Just the one. Maybe two." Despite the excitement of the situation, Sarah had to stifle a yawn near the end of her sentence; her body was only running on a few hours sleep.

The door to the room opened, and Sarah heard the click of heels that always signified the arrival of Lauren's mother. She looked over her shoulder to see that, sure enough, Mrs. Gladstone had entered the room, followed by a perpetually unamused-looking Cecilia.

"Hi, Mrs. Gladstone," Sarah greeted her. She hesitated before grudgingly addressing the woman behind her as well. "Hi, Cecilia."

"Sarah, darling. I hope you're well." Mrs. Gladstone breezed by her in a cloud of expensive perfume, circling the bed to stand by Lauren. She automatically started trying to fix her daughter's disheveled hair while Lauren batted her hand away. Her eyes scanned Sarah up and down, taking in the shorts and t-shirt with the incongruously heavy scarf; her second-day hair and the circles under her eyes. "What a creative outfit. It must be so carefree to be able to leave the house everyday without worrying about your appearance."

Sarah self-consciously adjusted the scarf making sure it was covering the bandage on her neck as she resisted the urge to exchange looks with Lauren, whose exasperated gaze she could feel boring into her.

"…thank you," she said, then turned her attention to Lauren and Greg. "Have you seen any of those cheap coffee vending machines around here?"

"Yeah, on the next floor up," Greg said. "Stairwell's at the end of the hallway. I made a few trips up there myself waiting for this one to make his grand entrance."

"If you can't find it maybe you can just grab someone else's coffee and drink that," Cecilia suggested coolly.

Sarah bit the inside of her cheek at the barb as she left the room. She kind of deserved it for her drunken behavior at the shower. On the other hand, Cecilia had also deserved to have her mimosa taken from her.

She readjusted the scarf around her neck as she passed by a couple of nurses on the stairs, but they were two engrossed in their conversation to pay her any attention.

"…moved the police officer that was in 427 down to 358," one of them was saying. Sarah slowed down, listening as she arrived at the next landing. Luckily, the stairwell carried voices well. "Janice said someone a couple of officers would be coming by to take a written statement from him tomorrow."

Tomorrow? Sarah had thought it would be a little longer before he was lucid; long enough for her and Matt to figure something out, at least.

"Oh, I was there when they admitted him last night. What happened to him?"

"No idea. But he's come in before to detain patients and he's a total pain in the ass."

"I guess whoever beat the shit out of him agrees..."

Their voices faded as Sarah heard a door swing open and closed. She glanced at the floor number above the stairwell door beside her: Floor 3. She was reaching for the handle before she could think about it any further.

She quickly found room 358 down the hall, and it was unguarded. It made sense; the person who the police believed had beat Donovan up was dead, after all.

The steady beep of machinery filled the room, which held only one patient. Officer Donovan was propped up against the stark white hospital pillows. He noticed her immediately as she came in the room, mutely watching her with narrowed eyes. The reason for his silence was immediately apparent: a complicated looking sling held his jaw closed, and Sarah was willing to bet it was broken in more than one place.

She quietly clicked the door closed behind her, then paused at the foot of his bed for a moment to glance at his medical chart. Broken jaw, broken nose, fractured eye socket…the list went on, and most of it was apparent by looking at him.

Sarah knew that at one point in her life, she would have felt some sympathy for the injured man in the bed, regardless of what he had done. But she'd used up so much of her emotional reserve in the last week that she had none left over for Donovan, who most certainly didn't deserve it. He had harassed her for weeks, helped Ronan stalk her and sabotaged her ability to go to the police for help. He'd helped Ronan try to kidnap her, despite knowing that torture and rape and (she had to assume) eventually death were planned for her. He had purposefully not helped the teenage girl who Ronan had kidnapped, he'd broken Karen's arm, he'd threatened her father—

She took a deep breath, determined to resolve this now, and grabbed the chair beside his bed, bringing it around until she could sit facing him. Being in such close proximity instinctively made her a little nervous, but she had to remind herself that he was in no shape to attack her, despite the fact that he probably really wanted to, if the look he was giving her was any indication.

"Do you remember the first time we met?" she asked him quietly. He narrowed his eyes at her, and she took that as a yes. "You and McDermott had me in the police station, and you were playing Good Cop Bad Cop while we waited. You were Bad Cop," she reminded him, thinking back to the taunts and threats he had made against her and her family. "You couldn't ask me any questions, so you told me that you would talk, and I was free to listen or not listen. So…now I'm going to talk, and you can listen if you want, or not."

She was surprised at how even her voice sounded considering the way her heart was racing in her chest, and the tension in her body as she constantly listened for the sound of the door opening behind her. But she had to do this now, before he could give his version of events to the police.

"McDermott is dead," Sarah said calmly. Donovan's didn't look surprised, nor did he seem upset by the information, which he must have already suspected. If anything, he seemed slightly taken aback by being told so bluntly. Sarah paused for a beat, then continued. "Ronan is dead." This time Donovan's eyes widened slightly in what looked like alarm. "You have a broken jaw, a fractured eye socket, a whole bunch of broken ribs, and who knows what else." She paused again to allow that to sink in, keeping her gaze locked with his. "And I'm doing just fine."

The statement wasn't entirely true—she now had several painful stitches down the side of her neck to add to her collection of scars. But she was certainly better off that Donovan was.

"I don't think you're going to spend a lot of time mourning either one of them. Seems like when it comes down to it, you're just interested in covering your own ass," she said. "And your best bet for doing that is to _leave me alone_. Forget that I exist."

Despite the generally unpleasant things that usually came out of Donovan's mouth, Sarah wished that he could speak so that she could see if she was convincing him or not. It was difficult to glean much from his facial expression behind all of the bruises, but it seemed as though he was a mixture of alarmed and suspicious. And angry—definitely angry.

"The office police report says that Ronan attacked me outside my apartment last night, and that you were nearby and came to help. You guys fought. Ronan got hit with his own tranquilizer dart, and he overdosed on the sedative. No one else was there," she emphasized strongly, holding his gaze as he stared at her in disbelief. "Just the three of us. That's the story I'm going with. And it's the one that lets you keep your job and stay out of prison. You don't have anything to gain here but prison time at best."

"Do you understand?" she asked, keeping her voice very low for fear that it would shake if she spoke any louder.

After a long, tense moment, Donovan jerked his head in a short nod. It wasn't a binding agreement, but it was all Sarah was going to be able to get out of him, and she hoped that his sense of self-preservation would keep him from deviating from the deal.

Sarah pressed her lips together and nodded. She supposed there was nothing left to say, so she stood, quietly pushed the chair back to its original position, and left the room. No one noticed her as she stepped back out into the hallway and back towards the stairwell.

"No coffee?" Lauren asked when Sarah returned to the hospital room.

Sarah, who had completely forgotten about her original intention to go find caffeine, just shrugged. "I'll find some later."

"Well, I think we figured out a name while you were gone," Lauren said, looking down at the bundle of blankets in her arms. "We're thinking Noah sounds nice."

"Noah?"

"Noah built the Ark in the Bible," Mrs. Gladstone interjected helpfully.

"She knows that, Mom. She's not an idiot," Lauren retorted. "And I didn't pick it because it was in the Bible, I just like it." She shifted the baby in her arms, nodding to Sarah to take him. "Here, hold him."

"Well, I know that Sarah never goes to church, since you stopped going around the time you met her," Mrs. Gladstone said offhandedly, sending Sarah a sideways glance. "I assumed she might not know who he was."

"I know who Noah was," Sarah protested, before mumbling, "I saw that Russell Crowe movie."

She gingerly took the baby from Lauren, readjusting the swaddle slightly so that she could see his face better. _Noah_. She wasn't particularly religious, but she couldn't help thinking that the Biblical connection seemed oddly appropriate to her.

After all of the flood of awful things, this baby would be able to live in a world that didn't have Ronan Greenfield in it. Hopefully, he could grow up with a godmother who had a normal job and a quiet, peaceful life. That was what was supposed to come after the great flood, wasn't it? The reward for enduring the storm?

"Noah," she repeated. The boy who got to start a new life after all that destruction. "I like it."


	27. Being Normal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, friends! I wanted to thank you guys for being so wonderfully patient with me while I deal with some Life stuff. I know the wait between updates has been long, and I'm sorry. But I tried to make the chapter extra long to make up for the wait, and included lots of Matt/Sarah scenes from both POVs. It's also a (mostly) more light-hearted chapter, since I've made you guys read so much angst the last few chapters. I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> PS: Since Christmas is approaching, don't forget that you can also check out the Christmas one-shot companion piece to this story if you haven't already. It goes through four Christmases before Matt and Sarah met each other, and gives a bit more background to each of them that you might enjoy. Plus, it's festive in a depressing way!

Hi, friends! I wanted to thank you guys for being so wonderfully patient with me while I deal with some Life stuff. I know the wait between updates has been long, and I'm sorry. But I appreciate everyone who dropped a review or PM to check in, and as usual I tried to make the chapter extra long to make up for the wait, and included lots of Matt/Sarah scenes from both POVs. It's also a (mostly) more light-hearted chapter, since I've made you guys read so much angst the last few chapters. I hope you enjoy it!

PS: Since Christmas is approaching, don't forget that you can also check out the Christmas one-shot companion piece to this story if you haven't already. It goes through four Christmases before Matt and Sarah met each other, and gives a bit more background to each of them that you might enjoy. Plus, it's festive in a depressing way!

* * *

Sarah stood in the middle of the rare books section of a bookstore, her arms full of several heavy books with a list of more titles balance on top. Jason had given her the list that morning, telling her he wanted to add to his collection. His office already held several bookshelves full of obscure and rather boring-sounding books, which he seemed to tout as an indicator of his intelligence, but apparently with Vanessa becoming more and more involved in Orion business, he felt the need to add an another shelf full.

"Um…what about…' _Highlights in the History of Concrete,'"_ she read from the list, then wrinkled her nose. Did Jason pick the most bizarre topics he could think of just so he could spring his random facts on people when the moment seemed right? She did not want to listen to useless concrete facts for the next month.

The sales associate helping her was currently perched on top of a ladder, inspecting the dusty, neglected shelves at the very top of the store's bookcases. Sarah assumed that was where they kept the books no one ever wanted to buy. The salesman had been helping her for around forty-five minutes now, and was understandably growing less patient with her by the moment.

As he searched for the book, Sarah's phone rang. She shifted the stack in her arms, struggling to slip her phone out of her pocket and catch a glimpse of the screen; it was Jason calling.

"Hello?" she answered.

"Sarah. I need you to come back to the office, there's a few things I need to discuss with you."

"Well, I'm right in the middle of buying your books—"

"Forget the books, just come back to the office."

"Oh. O—okay," she said uncertainly, but Jason had already hung up.

She winced apologetically at the sales clerk, who had now come down from the ladder and appeared to already know what was coming based off his unamused expression.

"Sorry. I'm really sorry." She awkwardly shifted the stack of books back towards him. Once the books were in his arms she balanced a few of the smaller ones on top until she could only see his disapproving eyes over the tower of nineteenth century dictionaries and how-to books.

"Thank you anyway!" she called to him apologetically before hurrying out of the store, which she hoped she'd never have to return to again. She wouldn't be surprised if they posted her photo behind the counter.

Back at the office, she knocked on Jason's door and he immediately called out for her to enter. When she did, she was surprised to see Vanessa there as well, sitting in a chair in front of Jason's desk.

Jason indicated for her to take the other seat.

"You remember Vanessa, right?"

"I do," Sarah said. Her heart flipped nervously; although Vanessa had greeted her as warmly as any other time, she seemed much more intimidating now that Sarah knew she was Fisk's wife. As thought anything she said in front of her went straight back to the man himself. "Nice to see you again."

"Well, I suppose we'll get right down to business," Jason said. "Vanessa has decided that she'd like to split her time between supervising here at the office and working from home, in order to spend more time with her family." Sarah was alarmed for a second before she remembered he meant the younger Fisk, not the elder. "And she was hoping you could be of some assistance with that."

Sarah looked from Jason to Vanessa in confusion. Did they need her to find someone to help Vanessa with the baby?

"Um…sure. If you need a nanny, I'm sure I can find you a good one—"

"No, no," Vanessa tutted. "Not a nanny. I am more than capable of raising my own child; nannies are so impersonal. But I have a lovely home that I enjoy spending time in, and I would like to have someone who can serve as an intermediary between myself and the Orion employees. Setting meeting times, delivering important paperwork, that sort of thing."

"And…you want me to do it?" Sarah asked uncertainly.

"Why not?" Vanessa asked. "You've proven to be a very valuable employee to Jason, and I'd love to get to know the people helping to keep the company running."

Sarah assumed it was best not to mention that she was, in fact, trying to  _stop_ the company from running.

"That's…very nice of you. Um…"

"But, of course, if you don't want the additional responsibility I would understand. You're young and I'm sure you have a social life; you don't want to spend all your time at work."

Vanessa had an inscrutable way of speaking that made it impossible for Sarah to tell if she genuinely meant that—meaning she must not truly understand the details of Sarah's conditions of employment—or if she was playing some strange game.

"Right. I…go out sometimes."

"Well, I don't need anyone immediately. Why don't you take until Monday, talk it over with Jason and see what would work out best for all of us?"

"Great plan," Jason jumped in. He stood as soon as Vanessa did, offering his hand to shake. She took it and smiled at him warmly.

"I look forward to seeing you again, Jason," she told him with an almost indulgent smile. "You too, Sarah."

Sarah nodded as Vanessa left the room. Then she turned her attention back to Jason, who had settled back into his large office chair and was running his fingers over his white tie in agitation. The small demonstration of frustration seemed at odds with the wide, perpetual smile he still had on his face.

"Well, I think that went well, don't you?"

"I—yeah. Definitely," Sarah said. Personally, it hadn't seemed like much had happened at all.

"It's great she wants to be more hands on with the company. And from home! I mean, I went to all that work putting in extra security measures on the fourth floor to set up her office. And I built an adjacent office for myself for when I get promoted to head of the company. But it's fine."

Sarah stared at him with wide eyes. It was very clearly not fine, and she wasn't sure what to say.

"Obviously the decision to take the job is up to you," Jason said. "But…if you were to turn it down, it would…reflect poorly on me. To have employed someone who doesn't have any desire for upward mobility in the workplace."

"Right," she said uncertainly.

"And of course, I can't understate how useful it would be to have someone I already know handling Vanessa's business. Just to ensure that we both fully understand each other's intentions for the company and how to implement certain…projects and personnel adjustments."

Jason was speaking in office jargon in an attempt to sound professional, but his real meaning was obvious: he didn't trust Vanessa, and he wanted Sarah to watch for signs that he was on his way out the door. Just one more layer of espionage added to the mix.

"Um…I'll definitely think about it and have an answer for you by Monday," she said.

Her answer didn't appear to satisfy Jason, who was clearly hoping for an immediate 'yes'. His wide grin faltered just a fraction.

"Very well," he said. He appeared to mentally move on from the subject as his gaze flicked down to her empty arms. "Where are my books?"

Sarah opened her mouth to remind him that he had specifically ordered her to abandon the task, but she decided against it.

"I'll…go get them right now," she said, holding back an exasperated sigh.

She turned and left the office, hoping there was a different sales associate working by the time she got back to the bookstore.

* * *

That night, Sarah stretched out on her couch, staring up at the ceiling and wishing she had a glass—no, scratch that, a bottle—of wine to help her as she tried to decide what to do about Vanessa's offer.

She didn't particularly want to take the job. The idea of working with Fisk's wife, being around his child, maybe even being in his home—where did Vanessa live, anyway?—was less than appealing. And every time she got pulled deeper into Orion, people got hurt. Usually her, sometimes others. But she also couldn't pass up an opportunity to potentially get away from Orion quicker. Working there was turning her into someone she didn't recognize. If someone had told her two years ago that she would kill someone—even by accident—she would have laughed at them. Especially if they'd told her she wouldn't even feel guilty about it.

Because she didn't feel guilty. She kept expecting to, but it never came. Sure, there were nightmares of going to prison, and a fairly constant feeling of teetering on the edge of a panic attack. But at night, when she couldn't sleep, she laid there and waited for the guilt to descend on her; instead she only felt relief that Ronan was gone. It bothered her that an emotion she knew should be there just wasn't, and it had to be because of the life she was living, the work she had to do.

Luckily, she was pulled from these thoughts by her phone ringing. Unluckily, the person calling was Lauren's mother. Sarah groaned when she saw the name  _Brenda Gladstone_  flash up on her screen.

"Hello?" she answered.

"Sarah, hello. It's Brenda."

"Hi, Mrs. Gladstone," Sarah said. She had never really gotten to the point of calling Lauren's mother by her first name, despite meeting her as an adult.

"I'm calling because I've set up a date and time for the official baby photos to be taken, and Lauren insists that the godmother be in them."

"Oh. Right. That's me." Sarah had forgotten that hiring a photographer for professional baby photos was the kind of thing Lauren's family did. "When are they?"

There was a quiet knock at her window, distracting her from the conversation. Looking over at the glass, she could see a familiar black silhouette on the other side. Mrs. Gladstone was still talking as she made her way over to the window, but she missed what she said.

"Sorry, could you repeat that?" Sarah cradled the phone between her ear and her shoulder as she pushed the window up to allow Matt inside. She thought he seemed to be moving slower than usual as he pulled himself through, though his landing was just as silent as always.

"I said, the appointment is scheduled for this Saturday at three o'clock in the afternoon. Will you be able to make it, or should I reschedule?"

"Saturday sounds fine," Sarah said, hoping that was the end of the conversation. "Was that all you needed?"

"No, actually," Mrs. Gladstone said.  _Of course not_ , Sarah thought with a roll of her eyes.

Matt had already discarded his mask on the table, and his sweaty hair stood up in odd directions as he leaned against the windowsill and waited for her conversation to be done. He tentatively rolled his right shoulder, and a wince of pain ghosted across his face as he did. Sarah frowned as she tried to see if he was injured—or rather, how badly he was injured.

"Are you hurt?" she whispered, covering the mouthpiece of her phone. Matt made a face and shook his head dismissively, despite clearly keeping his shoulder at an awkward and painful-looking angle. Her frown deepened as she looked at him skeptically.

Mrs. Gladstone—whose hearing appeared to rival Matt's—somehow picked up on her hushed words.

"Do you have company?" she asked. "Am I interrupting something?"

"What? Oh, no, sorry. I—have a mouse. I was talking to it," she said distractedly as she stood on her tiptoes to get a better look at Matt's shoulder. She shifted her phone to the other ear and cautiously tilted his chin to allow the light from her kitchen to better illuminate the area. Immediately she could see that the base of his neck was red and swollen right where it met his shoulder. She winced; it looked painful.

"You have a mouse in your home?" Lauren's mother repeated.

"My apartment tends to attract pests," she said, glancing sideways at Matt. He smirked at the jab, but didn't make any comment. Which was just as well—she didn't need Mrs. Gladstone asking her about who she chose to let into her apartment.

"Well I hope you plan on getting rid of your rodent infestation before Lauren brings my grandchild around," Mrs. Gladstone said, sounding deeply unamused.

"What else was it that you wanted to talk to me about?" Sarah asked in hopes of changing the subject. She stepped back from Matt and went into the kitchen, where she rooted around in her freezer for her now oft-used ice pack.

"Oh, yes. Cecilia was just showing me the photos from the baby shower."

"Sure," Sarah said vaguely, having no recollection of anyone taking photos. She winced at the thought of what she must look like in them.

"I'm trying to figure out what the theme was?" Mrs. Gladstone asked her.

"Um…the theme?" she repeated dumbly.

"Yes, the theme of the party. What was it? I can't tell from the photos."

"It was, uh…baby themed," she said, completely lost as she finally extracted the ice pack from the freezer. "The—the theme was baby."

There was a long silence on the other end, the palpable disapproval practically reaching through the phone line. "I see."

Returning to the living room, she scowled when she saw that Matt looked greatly amused by her flustered attempts to answer the rapid fire questions. She stood on her tip toes in front of him once more and gingerly pressed the ice pack to the base of his neck. He briefly closed his eyes at the contact, tilting his head to the side to allow her better access; she took that an indicator that the ice was helping. After a moment, he opened his eyes again and brought his hand up to hold the icepack himself, his hand brushing over hers as it replaced her grip on the pack. She brought herself down off her tiptoes and stepped back again.

_'Thank you_ ,' he mouthed at her, and she gave him a small smile before remembering she still had Mrs. Gladstone on the other end of the line.

"So, if that's all you need to discuss…" she began hopefully.

"It was. Remember, the photographer is going to be there at three o'clock sharp on Saturday."

"Okay."

"You'll need to be on time."

"I will be."

"And dress nicely. Put in some effort."

"Got it."

"No jeans. Or shorts."

"Mhm."

"And nothing you'd wear to a yoga class."

"Okaysoundsgreatseeyousoonbye," Sarah said hurriedly, quickly hanging up before Lauren's mother could say anything else. She tossed the phone onto the couch, then put her hands over her face and let out a long, frustrated groan. Dropping her hands again, she looked at Matt, who was still leaning against the windowsill with the icepack to his skin.

"Hi," she greeted him.

"Hi." Matt still looked annoyingly amused by the conversation he'd just overheard.

"What happened to your shoulder?"

"Just pulled a muscle, I think," he said, brushing the concern aside. "It's not bad."

"Your definition of not bad is different from most peoples," she reminded him, and he didn't deny it. He did, however, change the subject without much subtlety.

"That was Lauren's mother?"

"Calling to make sure I don't show up in cutoffs for their baby photos. I don't think she's very happy Lauren wants me to be in them."

"Have you…told Lauren about everything that's been going on?"

"Sort of. She knows that Ronan is dead, but not that I…" Sarah faltered, still not quite ready to say it out loud. She shook her head before pushing onward. "I just don't feel like dealing with that look she'll give me all the time if she knows. Like she thinks I'm going to have a nervous breakdown any second."

She felt foolish saying that last part to Matt, who had witnessed quite a few breakdowns on her part since they met. Thankfully, he didn't comment on that, just nodded as his brow creased.

"I'm spending the night at my dad's tomorrow night, by the way," she said. Mitch hadn't been doing well lately, and she had been trying to fit in as much time at his place as she could. "I figured I'd give you a heads up so you didn't think I got kidnapped or anything."

"Always a possibility with you."

"So…it's good you came by tonight, because I actually wanted to talk to you about something."

She fidgeted with the hem of her t-shirt, trying to figure out how to broach the subject of her potential promotion. She was positive Matt wouldn't want her to take it, and it would surely lead to an argument when she told him she was considering it. But she also wanted to hear his thoughts on the possibility, despite knowing they probably wouldn't line up with her own.

As usual, Matt quickly picked up on the nervous energy about her. "Everything alright?"

"Yeah," she said. He just raised his eyebrows at her, and she relented. "Jason called me into his office today. To talk to him and Vanessa."

"Vanessa?" Matt's voice already had a slightly sharper edge to it just from the name, and Sarah was willing to bet it would remain for the rest of their conversation. "What did she want?"

"She…wants me to work for her. Kind of."

There was a long pause.

"What?" he said, straightening up so he was no longer leaning against the window.

_There it is._

"They want me to be a sort of…go-between?" she explained hesitantly. "For the two of them. Coordinating their schedules, setting up meetings, bringing her paperwork on the days when she prefers to work from home. It was kind of vague, to be honest."

"And he's making you do it? You already have a job, working for him."

"I'd still be working for him. I'd just also be working for her. I think they could have gotten someone else, but…I don't know. I guess she likes me," Sarah said gloomily. She was less than thrilled with the idea that Vanessa wanted to spend more time with her. "So Jason asked if I would do it."

Her wording caught his attention. "He  _asked_ you? As in, gave you the option to say no?"

"Technically."

"Don't do it," Matt said immediately.

"Matt—"

"I mean it. Don't take the position, it's too dangerous."

"But…maybe it's worth it."

"Worth placing yourself in the middle of Wilson Fisk's personal life?" Matt asked in disbelief. "This is more than being a secretary or—or whatever your job title is right now. This is putting you smack in the middle of Fisk's radar."

"Well, maybe I need to be more than a secretary to get anything done," she insisted. "What have we accomplished so far, Matt? I mean, yes, Ronan is gone and Jason doesn't have his ties to the police department anymore. But Orion is still going strong. Maybe…maybe this is what needs to happen."

"Going after Fisk's wife."

"No. I'm not  _going after_  her, I just…I think maybe there's something there we could use. Jason doesn't trust her, and I don't think she trusts him. After she left, he…kind of implied that he wanted me to keep an eye on her. I mean, he didn't say it outright, because he's weird. But I think he wants to make sure she's not trying to get rid of him."

Matt closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "You'd be…spying on  _Wilson Fisk's_  family for Jason."

Sarah shrugged weakly. "Probably just his wife. I don't think the baby will be doing much."

"This isn't funny."

"I know."

"Do you?" Matt shot back. "You're not just going against Fisk's company now, Sarah. This is family. It's personal. If he even suspects that you're not telling the truth about who you are or what you're doing…"

"No one has any proof that I'm working with you."

"Fisk won't care about proof if he thinks his wife and child are in danger. He'll take you out just as a precaution if he suspects you. Just because he's in prison doesn't mean he can't use his connections to do a whole lot of damage."

Sarah knew that. Matt might have known Fisk better before he went to prison, but Sarah had heard enough stories from and about her coworkers to fully understand how dangerous the man was, no matter where they locked him up.

"I know. It's not a done deal yet," she said. "I have until Monday to decide."

Matt nodded, working his jaw in displeasure at the situation.

"What would happen?" he asked. "If you said no?"

"I don't know," she said honestly. "It would probably make Jason look bad, which…"

"Never works out well," he finished for her, his face darkening.

"Yeah."

Silence lulled between them, broken only by the drumming of Matt's fingers against the window sill.

"It's your decision to make," he said finally, a hint of resignation in his tone. "I just…don't like the idea of you being that close to Fisk's family."

"I know."

"Promise me you'll think this through. Really think it through."

"I promise," she said honestly. "Go home and ice your shoulder more."

True to her word, Sarah did think it through. Like most of her nights lately, she had difficulty sleeping, so she spent the long hours of waking time debating whether or not to accept the position. But when it was finally time for her to get up for work she was left with only exhaustion in the place of a decision.

* * *

The next night, Sarah went to visit her father. It was a difficult visit; he was distant and confused, with fewer bursts of lucidity than usual. After a tense, quiet dinner, he went to bed early, and she retreated to her own childhood bedroom soon after, hoping the change of scenery would help her sleep better.

There was no such luck. She woke up several times during the night, each time with a deep feeling of dread in her stomach, though there was no particular cause to pinpoint.

Shortly after midnight, she woke up yet again. Lying on her back in her bed, she took a deep breath, ready to try to calm herself back to sleep. But a few seconds later, she heard a noise, causing her to snap her eyes back open and listen closely. After a moment, the noise came again—she realized it was a voice, coming from somewhere in the house.

Sarah sat up quickly, her heart pounding. Who could be here? Two of the people who most recently posed a threat to her were dead, and the other was nowhere close to walking condition.

She struggled out of the tangle of sheets and fumbled her cell phone into the pocket of her sweatshirt. Then she squinted around in the darkness for anything to use as a weapon, cursing the fact that she had left her purse containing her pepper spray in the living room—which, coincidentally, was also where the stun gun she'd given her father was. How in the last few months had she not yet learned to sleep with a weapon next to her bed?

Unfortunately, teenage Sarah Corrigan had not lived the kind of lifestyle that resulted in keeping many dangerous objects in her bedroom. On the shelves there were lots of books and CDs, old cassette tapes that hadn't been played in years, some board games. The desk didn't offer much beyond some brightly colored gel pens and a few framed photos of her high school friends. She gave the lava lamp on her desk a cursory glance, but decided it was too heavy to be much use. Finally, her gaze landed on a trophy she'd gotten in sixth grade for perfect attendance. Her father had thought it was funny that they gave out trophies for such things, and had insisted she keep it.

Grabbing the trophy, Sarah weighed it in her hand as she padded towards the bedroom door. She quietly cracked the door open, listening closely, then slowly made her way down the hallway towards the open door of his bedroom. When she got to the doorway, her heart sank.

The voice talking was Mitch. She could see him clearly in the light from the streetlamp through the open blinds: he was sitting up straight in bed, looking up at the ceiling and turning his head as though watching something move around. His tone was so aggressive that it was nearly unrecognizable.

"Get down from there," he snapped at the ceiling. "Stop rolling around."

Perhaps it was the dreams Sarah had been having lately, but Mitch's words sent a chill down her spine. She stared, casting her eyes up towards the ceiling—where she already knew she wouldn't see anything—then back down to him.

"Dad?" she said softly.

He didn't appear to hear her. She set the trophy down in the hallway and stepped into the bedroom.

"I won't tell you again. You don't belong in here."

She flicked on the light. As the shadows were whisked away from the corners of the room, she was nearly convinced one of them would remain behind, solid and tall and broad shouldered, leering at her. But the room was empty, full of nothing but the heavy, buzzing stillness that settled in late at night.

"Dad, it's okay. There's nothing there."

Now that the room was well lit, her father seemed slightly less distressed. He looked around a few times in confusion before finally focusing on her, giving her a beseeching look.

"They were in the corners up there. Watching me."

Sarah bit her lip. She'd read about hallucinations because she knew they were coming. Most of the literature she'd read had advised her against arguing with whatever delusions her father was having; it would only upset him more. Instead, she tried to get his mind off them.

"Okay," she said slowly, trying to keep her voice calm. "What about the living room? Maybe, um…maybe it'll be better in there. I don't think there's anything in there."

He looked at her uncertainly, considering her suggestion. Then he nodded.

"Yes. Alright, let's…let's do that."

She turned on all of the lights in the living room and hallway, scanning the room to make sure there were no corners with shadows that could mess with his vision. Clicking on the television, she flipped through the channels to find something that would distract him without making it impossible for him to sleep. One channel was playing a  _Cheers_  marathon, so she chose that and set the volume on low.

Eventually, Mitch drifted back to sleep in his arm chair underneath the blanket she had draped over him. Sarah watched him for a few minutes before pulling her phone out of her pocket and bringing up a well-visited website in her browser: Greencrest Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. One of the best in the state, and well out of her price range. But not necessarily out of Jason's.

It wasn't a difficult decision to make, and it she didn't need until Monday to make it. In fact, the quicker the better.

* * *

And so the next day, Sarah found herself accepting the position Vanessa and Jason had offered her. Vanessa herself wasn't in the office that day, but Jason had been thrilled to be the one who would inform her. So thrilled, in fact that she had barely had to argue the case for him paying for her father's nursing home. She'd prepared an entire proposal to convince him to make a deal with her, but in the end he must have really needed her to take the job; he agreed after just a cursory glance over the brochures and financial papers she'd brought with her. She supposed the amount of money, which seemed astronomical to her, was just a drop in the bucket for him.

She knew the position was more dangerous, and had a much higher risk of her getting caught, but the idea of her father finally getting the help he needed outweighed that, so she tried to keep her thoughts centered on that. As long as she focused on this one small victory, she didn't have to think about Ronan and Donovan and McDermott and all of the failures that seemed to be stacking up in her life lately.

Entering her apartment after work, Sarah set her purse down on the kitchen counter and looked around. Her living room felt very large and very empty, and without work to focus on she found that the thoughts she was trying to avoid were slowly creeping into the edges of her mind. The strongest of which was doubt—about whether she'd made the right call, about whether Jason would follow through on his end of the deal. She should be thrilled that her dad would be getting the care he needed, but it just didn't seem real yet. Not until he was actually in the home.

She fished her phone out of her purse, hit the call button and waited, leaning back against the counter and undoing her hair from its bun. She was about to hang up when Matt answered on the fourth ring.

"Hey," he greeted her, sounding distracted. "You alright?"

The corner of her mouth turned up; the sound of a familiar voice helped to keep her at this good point she'd found, stopped her from sinking back down.

"You don't have to answer the phone with that question every time, you know," she reminded him.

"Sorry," he said with a chuckle. "It's become habit."

Sarah heard what sounded like shuffling papers in the background, and she glanced at the clock. It was later than she thought he usually got off. "Are you still at work?"

"Yeah. Foggy and Karen already left for the day, but I'm pretty behind, so I'm just finishing up a few things."

"Oh," she said, slightly disappointed.

"Why? What's up?"

"Think I could talk you into ditching work and coming to eat dinner with me instead?" she asked hopefully as she shifted the phone from one ear to the other and made her way down the hallway to her bedroom. "I had a few things I wanted to catch you up on, and…I can actually go out in public now."

"Tempting. I skipped lunch. Where'd you have in mind?"

Sarah smiled as she slipped out of her work heels, kicking them into the corner of her bedroom.

"Have you ever been to Rose's Pizzeria on fifty-seventh?"

"I haven't. You want to meet there or at your place?"

Sarah was about to tell him to meet her there, but she paused. She was curious about what Matt's day job was like. The closest she'd seen to him practicing law was when he and Foggy had helped her at the police station, and even then it had been too tense and strange of a situation to get a feel for what a normal day was like for him.

"Actually…I could come to you," she suggested. She bit her lip in the ensuing silent beat. Was Nelson and Murdock one of those spaces she still wasn't allowed to invite herself into?

"At the office?" he said, sounding surprised.

She shrugged, despite the fact that he couldn't see it. "It might be interesting to see where you spend all your time when you're not lurking on my fire escape."

"Alright. Don't set your expectations too high," he warned her wryly. "It's not exactly a palace."

"You did say everyone else was gone for the day, right?" she clarified nervously. She definitely didn't want to run into Karen quite yet—she still hadn't decided where she stood with her, and she felt guilty even thinking about the promise she'd made to her and then promptly broken.

"Just me here."

Sarah rummaged around in the top drawer of her desk for a few seconds until she found the business card that Mrs. Benedict had given her the day she first encountered Matt outside their apartment. She remembered how the older woman had pressed the card into her hand, not-so-subtly trying to set her up with the lawyer.

"Um…753 West Forty-Ninth Street?" she read from the card.

"Yeah," Matt replied. "How'd you know? We aren't official enough to be on Google yet."

"You're talking to a professional spy here, Matt," Sarah told him seriously as she turned to her dresser, grabbing some clothes out of the drawers.

His laugh came low and clear through the phone line. "Of course. I forgot."

"I'll be there soon.

* * *

A short while later, Sarah knocked on the door at the law office. She heard Matt's voice call out from somewhere inside the office for her to come in. Stepping into what appeared to be an attempt at a reception area, Sarah saw him sitting at his desk in a room off to the left. He lifted his attention from whatever he was working on when she stood in the doorway.

"So, this is Nelson and Murdock," she said, running her fingers along the door frame as she looked around the space.

Matt leaned back in his chair, offering her a wry grin as she walked around the space. "Try not to get overwhelmed by how majestic it is."

The lack of grandeur was outweighed by Sarah's curiosity about the place. Matt hadn't been lying when she said it wasn't a palace, but it wasn't awful, either. There were enough personal touches throughout the office to make the small space seem charming rather than depressing, and it had a warmer feel than the steel and glass skyscrapers where so many law offices were found. There were stacks of papers on his desk, mostly Braille with some printed ink mixed in, and something that kind of resembled a keyboard hooked into his laptop, which was open to a boring-looking page of legal text.

And then there was Matt himself, looking perfectly at home amidst the messy office picture, with his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his tie loosened slightly so it hung low around his neck. His glasses were resting on his desk next to his laptop, leaving his tired eyes exposed, and he hadn't shaved in a few days, leaving a dark scruff behind. Seeing him like that, she was struck at how easy it was to view him like others must: a handsome if intense lawyer, immersed in his work.

"I like it," she said. "The office. It suits you."

Matt quirked an eyebrow.

"I can't see the place, but I think that might be an insult," he said, offering her a half-grin. "It took some convincing to get Foggy to agree to renting it. He wasn't big on the view."

Sarah glanced out the window and was greeted by the sight of a half-built construction site; by the looks of it, the scaffolding and cranes were going to be sticking around for a while. She couldn't help but agree with Foggy.

"Better than the view from your apartment, at least," she said.

As she surveyed the street below, her eyes ran across a familiar silhouette. Her heartbeat skipped nervously at the sight of the tall, broad-shouldered man standing by the crosswalk, who she was positive was looking in her direction—

She blinked a few times and the man was no longer who she had thought he was. She noticed now that his hair wasn't quite the right color, his clothes fit him a little too well. And he wasn't squinting up at her, he was reading the street sign above the stoplight. She shook her head at herself and let out a shaky breath.

"What's wrong?" Matt asked, his brow furrowed as he paused from his papers, presumably interrupted by the sudden change in her demeanor.

"Um, nothing, I just thought…" Sarah's eyes drifted back down to the man in the crosswalk, who looked less and less like Ronan the more she looked. Her face heated up in embarrassment at her own paranoia.

"Thought what?" Matt prompted.

"Thought I saw a spider."

Matt's expression held the same mix of skepticism and resignation that it always did when he could tell she was lying but wasn't about to call her on it. She didn't like it, but it was better than when he  _did_  decide to call her on it, zeroing in on her lies with unnerving intensity.

Searching for a change of subject, she glanced around her room, her gaze falling on two framed certificates that hung on the wall nearby.

"Are these your degrees?" she asked. Her question was answered when she moved closer and saw that was indeed what they were: a graduate degree from The Columbia School of Law, and a New York State Bar certification.

"I thought it seemed a little pretentious to put them up on the wall," he said. "But Foggy insisted it would give clients more confidence in us, and Karen agreed, so…majority rules."

"They're behind glass," she noted. "Do you ever worry that Foggy will replace them with something weird and you won't be able to tell?"

Matt paused, looking vaguely concerned. "Why would you say that? Did he put something weird in there?"

Sarah laughed, choosing not to answer.

"Are you almost done with whatever you're working on?" she asked.

"Not even close," he said, leaning back in his chair and exhaling deeply. "This one case involves both the Housing Authority and Immigration Services, and neither of them are particularly easy to work with. Another is one that Family Services should really be helping with, but they're not. I honestly haven't even opened the other files."

Sarah listened intently as he talked about his work. She supposed she'd always kind of pictured Matt's lawyer job as something he did as a cover for his 'real' job as Daredevil. But this  _was_  a real job, with budgets and office supplies and clients who weren't Mrs. Benedict.

"That's…intense," she said with a frown. She had no clue how he dealt with these things all day and then willingly went out at night to take on even more. "If you want to rain check on dinner…"

"No, no. Taking some time away from it will help. I won't finish it tonight anyway," Matt said. He reached for his cane as he spoke, picking it up from the corner of his desk and unfolding it.

"Do you actually use your cane, or is it just like a…prop?" Sarah asked. She frowned and added apologetically, "That sounded less rude in my head."

For his part, Matt didn't seem bothered. She supposed he was probably used to answering questions like that.

"It's fairly helpful, actually. Obviously I can get around without it, but sensing where things are takes focus. It's tiring to do all day," he said. "Usually I use my cane and let Foggy lead me when I'm out during the day. Part of it is just out of habit, but I'd also exhaust myself by the time I go out at night if I didn't use a cane or a guide sometimes."

He stood up from his chair and slipped his glasses on. "You ready to go?"

"Yep."

As Matt put away the papers he'd been working on, Sarah took another good look at him, at the tiredness that lingered in the dark circles under his eyes. She bit her lip, hesitating before speaking.

"So, how does it work?" she asked.

Matt cocked his head and frowned. "How does what work?"

"Do…I take your arm, or do you take mine?"

The confused expression didn't leave his face, which was less than reassuring.

"You're…offering to guide me?" he clarified.

"Well…yeah. I mean, I know you don't need me to. I've seen you do your ninja tricks all up and down Hell's Kitchen. But…you're tired, and you said that it helps to not have to concentrate so much on your surroundings, so…I thought if it would take some stress off of you, I…could help…" she asked, trailing off a bit uncertainly at the end.

Matt didn't say anything for what was probably only a few moments, but felt much longer. Sarah shifted self-consciously, wondering belatedly if the offer made him uncomfortable or if he was just surprised. She opened her mouth to awkwardly back peddle, but Matt spoke first.

"I'd…take your arm, usually."

"Oh. Okay." She gave a small smile, holding her arm out slightly. "So, let's go then."

Matt took her arm just above the crook of her elbow, his large hand easily wrapping most of the way around, and together they left the office.

* * *

Matt had to withhold a laugh at how dismal Sarah was at leading him around. Of course, everyone seemed dismal compared to Foggy, who after years of practice was able to guide him through crowded New York City streets without missing a beat. Sarah reminded him more of how Foggy had been at the beginning of their friendship, when he'd been first learning how to lead—eager to help, but easily distracted from the task.

Of course, this meant that he wasn't actually getting to relax his senses like Sarah had intended, but he wasn't complaining in the slightest. It was relaxing in its own way, the two of them walking slowly and enjoying the night air, which had grown warm but not yet unbearably hot. In general, the person guiding was supposed to walk a step or two ahead of the person they were leading, but since he didn't technically need the help, Matt didn't see the harm in keeping in close step with Sarah, her arm pressed against his side, and she didn't seem to mind either.

As they made their way down the sidewalk, it was almost easy to forget the traumatic events of the past week—but little reminders kept popping up, not allowing either of them to put it completely out of their minds. For Matt, it was the disconnect between the things Sarah was saying and the way she was acting. From listening to her, she sounded fine: all light-hearted jokes and routine rambling. But he hadn't missed the way her heartbeat had skipped fearfully in the office. He kept the observations mostly to himself, quietly filing them away until he could figure out a way to bring them up.

"So…how'd you hurt your shoulder?" she asked.

Matt sighed. He'd been pushing himself too hard the last few nights, trying to make up for his utter failure in the alleyway the other night, and it wasn't a subject he particularly wanted to talk about.

"Chasing a guy who tried to rob a bank," he explained. "He shot a couple of security guards, but from what I heard they'll be alright."

"And…the bank robber?" she asked, sounding more curious than concerned.

Matt jerked his head noncommittally. "He'll be alright, too, when the cast comes off his leg."

"Ouch."

"In my defense, I wasn't in the best mood after he wrenched my shoulder out."

They walked in silence for a while before Sarah spoke up again.

"Maybe I should rob a bank," she speculated absently. "It's good money if you don't get caught."

Matt smirked. "As your lawyer, I'd probably have to advise against it."

" _Are_  you officially my lawyer?" she asked him. "Because if so, I hate to tell you that you might need to establish some better personal boundaries with your clients."

Matt laughed loudly at that. She had a point—the state bar would probably frown on just about every aspect of his relationship with Sarah as a client. Then again, the state bar would frown upon a lot of things he did.

"Alright. Next time you end up in an interrogation room you can call some other lawyer to help you."

"I happen to know another lawyer I can call, thank you very much."

"Foggy won't defend a bank robber."

"Fine," she conceded. Then after a pause, she titled her head up at him hopefully. " _You_  should rob a bank. But give me half the money. You'd probably be better at it, anyway."

"Why would I give you half the money if you aren't helping to rob the bank?"

Sarah scoffed. "I came up with the idea."

"You came up with the idea of bank robbery?" Matt asked doubtfully.

They continued like this the rest of the way to the restaurant, quietly bantering as they made their way down the sidewalk. It was a nice change from the usual urgency and angst of their usual conversations, and Matt found himself reluctant to let go of her arm when they reached the restaurant and were seated at their booth.

The waitress was a middle-aged woman with a tired voice and a dangly earrings that jingled slightly as she walked. She placed the menus on the table, looked from Matt to Sarah expectantly, then heaved a sigh.

"Drinks?" she prompted impatiently.

"Oh," Sarah said. "Um, coffee, please. Black."

"You?" the waitress said, turning to Matt.

"I'll have the same. Thank you."

She merely grunted noncommittally in response before walking away—hopefully to get their coffee, though Matt couldn't be positive.

"I don't think this waitress likes you as much as our last one did," Sarah said, tutting in fake sympathy.

Matt smirked, leaning back in his seat. He liked when he got to see this side of her: small flickers of the person he suspected she had been before all of this.

"I'll get by. Don't think she'll be reading the menu for me, though."

"To be fair, the last one was obviously looking to get your number."

"Right, Gracie. She left me hers, actually," he recalled. "She wrote it on napkin and put it under my plate. I already know what I want here anyway. It's some kind of pesto, red pepper, barbequed chicken pizza."

Sarah scanned the menu for a few seconds. "Umm…yeah, I see that. How'd you know?"

"Guy on the other side of the room is eating one right now. It smelled good," he explained. Sarah turned in her seat, craning her neck to get a look across the room. Matt tuned in to the man she was looking at; he could hear the sound of tweed sliding against vinyl as the man shifted in his seat, then the soft click of his wedding ring against plastic as he adjusted his glasses. Forming a picture of the man, he added, "The one who kind of looks like a professor."

A wave of citrus scent hit him as Sarah whipped her head around to give him an incredulous look. She shook her head. "That is _ridiculous_  that you know that. It will never stop being ridiculous."

Matt couldn't stop himself from grinning a little at that. While he was making progress with Foggy, they still weren't to the point where he could casually bring up his abilities in conversation and not have it feel awkward, weighed down by the fact that he'd kept them a secret for so long. It was kind of nice to get to show off a little, to have someone so interested in what life was like for him to experience.

"Why did she write her number on a napkin for you?" Sarah asked, bringing him back to the present. "She had no way of knowing you could read it."

Matt shrugged. "People don't always think through the logistics of being blind."

"Did…you end up calling her?" Sarah asked casually.

"No."

"Oh," she said, and for a split second he could have sworn she sounded relieved, but he must have imagined it. "Why not?"

"I didn't even think to take the napkin with me when we…" Matt paused, hesitant to bring up the events that had followed. "Well, we left in kind of a hurry."

"Oh. Right." The smile disappeared from her voice, and he knew she was thinking of how that night out had ended: with Ronan sitting across from Matt, taunting him to his face about his intentions to hurt Sarah and Matt's inability to stop him.

It drove him crazy that Ronan had been right, in a way; in the end, Matt hadn't gotten to give him the beating he'd so been looking forward to. He'd gotten a few good hits in—the sound of Ronan screaming as Matt drove the knife through his hand had been satisfying, as had the crunch of several bones breaking in his face upon impact with Matt's fist—but it should have been more. Ronan should have suffered longer as penance for the way Sarah still sunk into herself sometimes, still flinched at sudden movements. And for the way he'd made her internalize the things he'd drilled into her over the months; the way she still seemed to think that she was stupid and useless, despite proving herself time and time again to be smart and resourceful. It only made him wish all the more that he could have been locked in a room with Ronan for a few hours before he died.

But that wasn't how it had gone down. And it didn't matter, he reminded himself. Sarah was alive and—mostly—unharmed, and sitting across from him.

If the waitress noticed their change in mood when she returned to the table, she didn't mention it. After taking their orders, she quickly disappeared into the back one more.

Some song was playing over the speakers, and Sarah absentmindedly tapped her fingers along the side of her coffee mug to the tune. He could tell she had something on her mind, but for whatever reason she was putting off talking about it.

In the end, he didn't have to wait long to find out.

"I took the promotion," she said suddenly. The announcement would have seemed out of left field had he not been able to tell she was building up to it. Matt couldn't say he was surprised by her decision, as much as he wished she had done the opposite.

He nodded. "I figured you might."

"My dad…needs to go into a home," she said very quietly. Sarah rarely spoke about her father's illness, and Matt remained silent, waiting for her to continue. Her voice was tight as she spoke, clearly pained under the carefully controlled calm she was maintaining. "I…I can't leave him alone in that house anymore. He's going to get hurt. He needs to have someone around all the time, and he's only going to get worse. I can't afford to pay for the kind of care he needs. But…Jason can."

Matt blinked in surprise.

"And he agreed to that?"

"Yeah. He…really wanted me to take the position, I guess. To keep an eye on Vanessa. Since he'll be the one writing the checks to the home, he'll know where my dad is, which I'm not crazy about, but…it was kind of necessary. Given my arrangement."

The waitress, who had a knack for showing up during the awkward lulls in their conversation, appeared at the tableside and set their pizza slices down. Sarah and Matt both distractedly thanked her before she left.

Bringing her father into the equation had taken some of the wind out of Matt's argument.

"I'm sorry," he said genuinely. "About your dad."

She nodded, but wilted slightly in the way she always did when talking about her father.

"This is all I can do to help him. I've already let him down too many times lately."

Although she didn't say it explicitly, he knew she meant of the large sum of money she turned down that could have easily bought her father a far more comfortable life. Money she had turned down for him.

"Just…be careful, Sarah. Fisk is unstable, even more so than Jason. And the only thing he cares about is Vanessa. If he gets wind that you pose any sort of threat to her or their child…he'll go after the people you love. He'll send people after your dad, after Lauren."

In the silence after his words, he could hear her heartbeat; it was faster than normal. Nervous. He didn't like that she was afraid, but part of him was glad she understood the gravity of the situation. She  _should_  be afraid of being one step closer to Wilson Fisk.

"Then I guess he better not find out," she said steadily. If he wasn't able to hear her heartbeat giving her away, he might have believed the calmness in her voice. "So…are you going to help me or just be mad at me?"

Obviously he was going to help her; they both knew that. It didn't mean he was any more enthusiastic about the prospect of her being in significantly more danger at work—something he hadn't even thought was possible.

"Don't see why I have to pick one or the other," he said finally, eliciting a tired laugh from Sarah.

"I'll take it," she said.

"But we need to start up your training sessions again."

"Okay."

"Soon. This weekend."

"Okay."

He cocked his head suspiciously at how easily she agreed.

"Are you just agreeing to avoid more of an argument?"

"I'd more categorize it as a lecture, but…yes."

He leaned his head back in exasperation. "I'm not trying to lecture you, I'm just…"

"Intensely overprotective?" she finished. "Yeah. I'd have to be in a coma for the last few months not to notice that."

He opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again.

"Not my best trait," he admitted grudgingly.

Sarah laughed. "Not your worst."

God knew that was true—and if anyone was familiar with his worst traits it was her.

"Right," he said quietly, a guilty wince crossing his face.

"Hey," Sarah said softly, tapping her foot against his leg under the table. "That's not what I meant. I just mean that…given how my life is going these days, having an overprotective vigilante hanging around isn't the worst thing. Even if it means getting lectured, like… _all_ the time."

"I don't want to see you get hurt."

"I know."

Before he could say anything else, an unfamiliar female voice called out Sarah's voice from across the restaurant.

"Sarah!"

"Oh," Sarah sounded surprised by whoever had approached them, though not unfriendly. "Allison, hi."

Matt didn't recognize the name. Whoever she was, she was tall and thin, and as she got closer he picked up on a perfume that smelled like roses.

"It's so good to see you! How are you?" the woman chirped enthusiastically.

Sarah adjusted the thin scarf around her neck self-consciously; Matt could hear the material brushing against the bandage on her neck that she was trying to cover up.

"I'm—I'm great, how are you?"

"I'm doing fantastic. I hope that you're feeling better after the—um…incident? At the baby shower?"

One of Lauren's friends, then, Matt surmised. He could sense Sarah's face flushing with embarrassment.

"Yeah. I'm…doing a lot better now."

"Clearly," the woman said, nodding teasingly at Matt—a gesture she assumed he was oblivious to, but which Sarah knew he wasn't. She quickly ignored it and moved on to introductions.

"Matt, this is Allison. Allison's an old friend of mine from college. We used to live across the hall from each other in the dorms. Allison, this is Matt," Sarah explained. Matt noticed that she deliberately didn't give any explanation for how she and Matt knew each other, but it didn't seem to phase Allison.

"Hi, nice to meet you," Allison said, holding out her hand to shake. Matt offered his hand just a few inches left of where he should, and she quickly adjusted to meet him there.

"It's so crazy that I'm running into you, because you know who I ran into earlier this week?" she asked Sarah, not waiting for her to guess before answering. "Nick Reynolds! Have you talked to him lately?"

If Allison was expecting an excited response, she was wrong. Matt listened interestedly, curious as to who they were talking about.

"No, not for…over a year and a half, probably."

"Really?"

"That's…kind of how breakups work."

So Nick was an ex, then. Allison chattered quickly about her encounter with the man, clearly oblivious to Sarah's discomfort.

"—and he's dating a model now—isn't that crazy? But like just a catalogue model, not a couture model," she assured them. "She's like fourth cousins with the Kardashians or something."

"Oh, wow, that's…that's so wonderful to hear," Sarah said unenthusiastically.

"Anyway, have you given any thought to what we talked about at the party?"

"Mmm…mhm," Sarah hummed vaguely, clearly having no idea what the other woman was talking about.

"So…what do you think?"

"What do I…think?"

"Yeah. Would you be willing to do it?"

Matt kept his expression carefully neutral when he felt her gaze momentarily flick over to him.

"Well—I—maybe…you could just walk me through the details again? Of the…of the thing?"

"Details are blurry, huh?" Allison asked knowingly. "You were pretty plastered. But I mean, that's like your thing, you know?"

"My thing?"

"Yeah! You were always the queen of drinking games in college. They named a drink after her at the bar across from our campus," she informed Matt, who was very interested in this information.

"Did they?" he asked, "What was the drink?"

" _Not_ important," Sarah said, sending him a pointed glare that he could feel even without seeing it.

"Well, you've always known how to throw a party. I was like, this baby shower is great, and then I stepped outside for two seconds to get some fresh air and missed all the juicy stuff! I heard you and Cecilia got into some big fight about that Daredevil guy while I was gone."

At the unexpected mention of his alter ego, Matt instinctively tensed. He didn't miss the way that Sarah's head moved a fraction as he assumed her eyes flicked to him, or the way her fingers tightened ever-so-slightly around her mug. She hadn't mentioned anything to him about getting into an argument about him.

Allison didn't seem to notice the tension that her words had created.

"It wasn't a fight, it was a…small disagreement."

"Well, whatever it was, she really has it in for that guy. I think she kind of has it in for everyone, though. Anyway, the party was great up until got rushed to the hospital and everyone thought you were dead," she finished cheerfully.

"Um, what—what was the point you were making?" Sarah asked.

"Oh, right. Anyway, I'm having this charity fundraiser soon; just the usual, a few hundred per plate and we're raising money Lesch-Nyan Syndrome this time—charity is just so important, don't you think? Andrew is technically having the fundraiser but he's clueless when it comes to planning parties," Allison said with an eye roll. "He wanted to hire a string quartet, even though I told him that would be way too overbearing for this kind of event—I mean, obviously, right?" Allison tittered. "Anyway, eventually I convinced him to let me pick the music, and I was wondering if maybe you were interested."

"Interested?"

"In playing the piano during the party. You always used to play for events back in school, so I thought maybe…"

"Oh." Sarah blinked. "Wow."

"You wouldn't have to play the whole night, obviously," Allison clarified quickly. "Just during the hors d'oeuvre, and then for a while when people are milling around. You'd have tons of time to enjoy the party. But we'd pay you for the whole time, of course."

"That's…really nice of you. But I—I actually, um…I don't play anymore."

"You're kidding me."

"Nope," she said, the nonchalant tone she'd been aiming for sounding more strained than anything. "Not for a while now."

"Shut  _up_. You're  _kidding_ me," Allison repeated. "You don't do accompaniment or recitals or  _anything_  anymore?"

Sarah just wordlessly shrugged and shook her head.

"Didn't you have, like, a fellowship? To play all of those summer concerts?"

"Not anymore," she said, the casual tone even more forced now.

"But you were so good!" Allison persisted, apparently not getting the hint. "Piano was like, your life."

"People change," Sarah said quietly.

"I guess they do. Wow. Well, listen," Allison said, reaching a manicured hand into her purse and pulling out a small business card. "I don't know if you still have my number from school, but it's on here. Call me if you change your mind, okay? I'll talk to you soon!"

"I—uh—okay, thanks," Sarah said, but Allison was already gone, leaving a trail of rose scented perfume behind her.

In the awkward silence that ensued, Matt searched for something to say.

"Your friends all like to talk a lot."

"We're not really friends anymore. I hadn't seen her in about two years, I think. Until the party…apparently."

"You don't remember talking to her?"

Sarah was silent for a beat.

"I…don't even remember her being there," she admitted. "The whole party's kind of a blur except for a few chunks." Sarah groaned, leaning back in her seat and pressing her palms to her eyes. "That's so embarrassing. It's even worse because it's her. She's so…put together."

"Sounds boring."

"She's raising money for… _Lesch-Nyan_ Syndrome. I don't even know what that  _is_."

"Well, maybe you should go play at the fundraiser and someone will tell you," he suggested.

"There's no way I can play at that fundraiser."

"Why not?"

"I haven't played in months, for one. And I've been to Allison's parties before," Sarah said. "It'll be full of all her husband's rich friends and people I went to school with that I either haven't spoken to in forever or very recently embarrassed myself in front of at Lauren's baby shower." She tossed the card down on the table. "It was nice of her to offer, but it's not going to happen."

"Why  _don't_  you play anymore?" he asked curiously.

Sarah's hair brushed against her shoulder as she tilted her head to the side, a motion he knew was probably accompanied by a skeptical look. "Um, maybe we haven't met. I'm Sarah, I spend all my time working for Death Eaters."

"Yeah, I know. But you don't play at all, even outside of work."

"I did, for a while," she said with an uncomfortable shrug. "After I started Orion, I mean. But it was…painful."

"Painful how?"

"It was easy to sit down at a piano and close my eyes and pretend like things were back to normal, but…they weren't. And it just made it that much worse going back to real life. Like a bad hangover," she said quietly. The topic obviously didn't have appositive affect on her mood. "And having Allison ask me to play at her perfect charity party is even worse."

Matt frowned, and he tapped his fingers on the table as he searched for something to say.

"If it makes you feel any better, she's a stress smoker."

"What?"

"Her breath reeks of cigarettes," he told her. "She must smoke half a pack a day. But she also uses mouthwash and perfume to cover it, and she keeps her cigarettes in her makeup bag, so I'm guessing so tries to hide it."

"That's so creepy that you know that," Sarah said, sounding both disturbed at his methods and delighted by this new information. "Maybe her life isn't perfect. Even if Nick's apparently is."

"Nick…is your ex?"

"Yeah. From a few years ago," she said.

"Were you two serious?"

"Uh…he was, I think. I wasn't."

"Ouch."

"Yeah. Well, now he's dating a Kardashian and I'm celebrating the fact that I can go out in public without getting murdered. So…I showed him," she said half-heartedly, tracing her finger around the rim of her mug.

The corners of Matt's mouth turned down at the resigned tone in her voice. Running into people from her old life clearly didn't do wonders for Sarah's outlook.

"Well, I'd be out of luck if there was a Kardashian in your shoes," he offered. "I don't think they're quite as resilient as you are."

"No?" she asked wryly.

"Nah," he said, wrinkling his nose and giving her a crooked grin. "One minor stab wound and they'd be done."

Sarah finally laughed, some of the tension leaving her shoulders.

After they paid and stood to leave, Matt quickly slid the discarded business card off the table and slipped it into his pocket.

He probably shouldn't be spending time with her like this; he knew that. The more time he spent with Sarah, the more it became glaringly obvious that while their relationship was getting easier, it wasn't getting any less complicated. But if Matt had learned anything over the years, it was that this was around the time people usually stepped out of his life; as soon as he started acknowledging they were important to him. He'd thought it was already done when she had left him that voicemail, but here he was with yet another chance. At some point he would screw up and be all out of second chances, but until that point came he had no plans to stay away. He shouldn't be here, but she had asked him to be, so there was no chance that he would be anywhere else.

So against his best judgment, he turned to her as they stepped out of the restaurant and onto the busy sidewalk.

"I'll walk you home," he offered.

* * *

Sarah's apartment was several blocks in the opposite direction from Matt's, so it didn't make much logistical sense for him to walk her home, but she didn't mind the company. However, something was bothering her, and Sarah chewed the inside of her cheek as they walked down the sidewalk.

Why hadn't he brought up the subject of her talking to Cecilia about him? It wasn't like him to miss an opportunity to get overly protective of his secrets. And he had definitely reacted when he heard Allison mention his alter ego, even if he had tried his best to keep it hidden. Yet he had brought up every aspect of that conversation but that.

Finally, her curiosity got to be too much.

"So…aren't you going to ask?" she inquired warily.

"Ask about what?" Matt replied, though from his casual tone she was fairly certain he knew what she was talking about.

"My conversation with Cecilia about you."

Matt was quiet for a moment. "No."

"No?" Sarah repeated doubtfully, turning her head to look at him fully.

"No."

There was a long pause.

"Is this a trick?" she asked suspiciously. "Are you waiting until we pass by somewhere dark and scary?"

"This is Hell's Kitchen, everything is dark and scary."

"You know what I mean."

"It's not a trick," he said, shaking his head and hesitating before continuing. "If it was a conversation I needed to know about…you would have told me."

Sarah looked away from where she had been staring suspiciously at Matt's profile. She was thrown by this new turn of events.

Unable to drop the subject, she spoke up again a minute later.

"It's just—you're usually sort of an answer-me-now kind of guy, so…this is confusing."

Matt seemed reluctant to explain himself, which she thought was strange.

"I…haven't missed the fact that you've given me a few more second chances than you probably ought to have. I figured…maybe I should start trying to deserve some of them."

"Oh." Sarah didn't know what else to say. She was touched by this decision to finally,  _finally_  trust her. But she also couldn't shake a feeling of guilt over not telling him the full story. She didn't want to ruin the olive branch he was extending, but she could already picture this coming back to bite her in the ass if she didn't talk about it now.

"I don't want you to think I'm hiding this from you, so I think you should know…Cecilia's a reporter," she said slowly. Matt didn't immediately say anything, so she continued. "I mean, kind of. She mostly just writes shitty opinion pieces."

"Opinion pieces…on what?" he asked warily.

"Lately? …mostly about you."

She glanced sideways at him to gauge his reaction, but his expression was hard to read.

He exhaled heavily. "Of course."

"She's Lauren's cousin," Sarah explained. "And she's awful, and I didn't know she was a reporter when I was talking to her."

"And this was at the baby shower?" Matt clarified.

"Mhm."

"The one where you were concussed, and drinking, and strung out on prescription pain killers?"

Sarah winced at the unforgiving but accurate description. "Yes."

"Right."

"It's just that she had her opinion on what you do, but her opinion was stupid, and…I just sort of ended up saying something to her about it. But it was nothing."

It was a simplification of the truth. In actuality, it was something of a struggle to recall exactly what she had said in the conversation. She remembered the gist of it: the topic of Daredevil had come up somehow, and Cecilia had been of the opinion that the vigilante and the people he saved were less than deserving. The details beyond that were blurrier, but she was positive the short argument hadn't revealed anything suspicious.

Matt was quiet again, and she looked over at him worriedly, wondering if thoughts of his identity being exposed were running through his head. Another pang of guilt went through her. His identity had already been revealed once because of her; she didn't want him worrying that it would happen again.

"I didn't say anything that would put you at risk," she said quietly. "I would never do that to you, Matt."

"I know," he said finally. "If you say it was nothing…I believe you."

She blinked. This was going weirdly well. "Really?"

"I mean you aren't exactly making it  _easy_ , but…"

A smile grew on her face as she realized he was actually sticking with his decision to trust her. He was still holding on to her arm, and she bumped her shoulder against his lightly, causing the corner of his mouth to quirk up slightly.

"Just…maybe don't talk to any more reporters about me while blackout drunk," he couldn't stop himself from adding.

"Got it."

"And I don't need you defending my reputation to people," he reminded her.

"Okay. Next time someone's calling you a lunatic I'll agree with them."

"Good."

She found herself glancing over at him for the remainder of the walk, trying to wrap her mind around how far both of them had come since they met.

Matt gently tugged on her arm, making her side step out of the way of a tall woman talking on her cell phone, who Sarah had just been about to run into.

"Are you leading me or am I leading you?" Matt asked with a smirk.

Sarah's face flushed slightly; she'd forgotten she was supposed to be guiding him.

"Right. Sorry," she said with a laugh. "I'll do better next time."

Matt tilted his head in her direction. His smirk was still lingering on his lips, but there was something else playing across his expression that she couldn't quite place.

"Or you could always get Gracie the waitress to guide you," she added.

Matt groaned at the repeated mention of the pretty, overly eager waitress. "What was it you said about finding someplace dark and scary?"

She just shook her head at him as they made their way down the sidewalk.

* * *

Later that week, Sarah found herself standing in front of her bedroom mirror, where she had been standing for several minutes with a vastly unenthusiastic expression on her face. Mrs. Gladstone's words echoed in her ears:  _Dress nicely. Put in some effort._

In reality, the request wasn't particularly unreasonable, but Sarah found herself struggling with it all the same. After a year of purposefully dressing to draw as little attention to herself as possible, along with a few months of selecting outfits specifically for their ability to camouflage various cuts and bruises, attempting to dress up nicely didn't come as naturally to her as it once did.

"Effort," Sarah murmured, staring at her reflection. "Right. I can do that."

The majority of her clothes weren't an option, given the very obvious wound on her neck, which was glaring with or without the bandage. After several discarded outfits, Sarah settled on a blue, sleeveless dress with a mockneck that covered most of her throat. She opened the jewelry box on her dresser, sifting through her necklaces and earrings for the first time in ages before selecting a coral pendant on a delicate gold strand and a pair of matching earrings. The jewelry and the dress were both brighter than anything she'd worn in a while, and when she looked in the mirror again she was surprised to see that the colors helped to soften the sharp edges of her figure.

Focusing on dressing up had taken her mind off of the tight knot that perpetually lingered in her stomach these days, and she was almost in a good mood as she stood on Lauren's doorstop that afternoon. Of course, that good mood swiftly evaporated when she remembered that Cecilia and Lauren's mother were also on the other side of the door.

Lauren answered the door, looking remarkably bright-eyed and put together for a new mother. If she wasn't Sarah's best friend, she undoubtedly would have hated her for it. She followed Lauren into the nursery, where baby Noah was sleeping in his crib. He was wearing a brightly colored onesie with the words 'Party Animal' printed above a picture of a giraffe in a birthday hat.

Sarah gave her friend an amused look.

"I thought you were strongly against onesies with stupid sayings on them."

"I am," Lauren said. Then she relented, "I  _was._  But this one is just so  _cute,_ look at it."

"Wow," Sarah said, watching as Lauren brushed her fingers against the small amount of fine hair on Noah's head.

"What?"

"Nothing," she said innocently. Then, unable to restrain herself she added, "You know, in Whoville they say—"

"Stop it."

"—the Grinch's small heart grew  _three sizes_  that day," she finished laughingly.

"I hate you."

"No, you don't. You're incapable of hate, because now you're a  _mom_ , and no longer the cold-hearted bitch I know and love."

"Are we swearing in front of my grandson already?" came a cool voice from behind Sarah. She turned her head to see Lauren's mother stride past her, her lips pursed. "I'd have thought you two could wait until he was in elementary school, perhaps."

"How does she always do that?" Sarah whispered to Lauren. "Does she Apparate?"

"You have very weak peripheral vision," Lauren informed her, and Sarah scowled at her before turning to the woman in question.

"Hi, Mrs. Gladstone," Sarah said guiltily.

"Sarah," she acknowledged, then blinked as she took a second look at her. "You look very nice."

She sounded surprised that Sarah had followed her instructions and not dressed like a yoga teacher.

"…thank you," Sarah said guardedly, giving Lauren a questioning look. Was this a trap? But her friend only shrugged in return, equally surprised by the compliment.

The moment was interrupted by Cecilia, who followed Mrs. Gladstone into the room with a bored look on her face. For a wonderful minute, Sarah had forgotten that she would be there—supposedly to help with the baby, but in reality for Lauren's mother to have someone with whom she could exchange constant exasperated looks.

She and Sarah nodded in greeting, but didn't say anything.

"The photographer is all set up and ready to go when we are," Cecilia told Mrs. Gladstone.

"Unfortunately he'll have to wait," she replied, a disapproving look on her face. "Lauren's father is running late," she said, twisting her mouth disapprovingly. "I'll call again and see what's taking him so long. That man can't navigate New York City to save his life."

Sarah sent up a silent thank you as Lauren's mother left the room. Then, as though that wasn't good luck enough, Cecilia started towards the door a moment later.

"And I'll be out on the balcony until everyone is ready to start," Cecilia said. "I don't have the patience to listen to the Gilmore Girls talk today."

With that she left the room, which seemed remarkably brighter without her or Mrs. Gladstone.

"Does she mean us?" Sarah repeated, exchanging confused looks with Lauren. "That doesn't make any sense. Am I your daughter or are you my daughter?"

"Obviously I'm Lorelai," Lauren said. "I have a baby and a whimsical air about me. And you're Rory because you're…quiet and like to read. And you have the whole big blue eyes game going on."

"And your mom does remind me of Emily," Sarah acknowledged.

"Valid," Lauren agreed. "Okay, come on. We need to go talk to the photographer for a minute."

With that she tugged Sarah out of the room and down the hall.

"Talk to him about what?"

"You," Lauren replied simply.

"Oh. Wait, what?"

Before she could fully register what Lauren had said, the two of them had rounded the corner and were standing in the living room, where a tall man with dark blond hair was fiddling with an expensive looking camera. His suit looked similarly expensive, and when he looked up from the camera screen he was concentrating on she could see that he had a handsome, friendly face.

"Sarah, this is Todd. He works with Greg," Lauren said, coming to a stop in front of him. "Todd, meet Sarah."

"Nice to meet you, Sarah," Todd said, offering his hand with a smile.

"Um…hi," Sarah said. She shook his hand, a bit bewildered as to why Lauren sounded so enthusiastic about introducing her to her photographer.

"I mentioned Todd to you a little while ago, remember?" Lauren said, giving her a meaningful look. "When we were shopping for baby shower decorations? I told you I…wanted to hire him to take some photographs, and that when your life was less hectic you could…be in those photos."

Sarah squinted at her for a second before remembering what she was talking about. This was the guy she'd told Sarah she wanted to set her up with, but Sarah had told her it would have to wait until she was no longer being actively stalked.  _Christ, she works fast._

"Oh.  _Oh_ ," she said, turning back to the man in front of her. "Um, it's nice to meet you."

"I've heard a lot about you," he said.

"That's—yes. Good," Sarah said dumbly, still thrown by this new turn of events. Lauren sent her a look that clearly said she was being socially inept, so she cleared her throat and tried again. "Um, so you work with Greg, then?"

Greg worked for an advertising firm as a copywriter, and was quite successful at it—hence the large and nicely decorated apartment he and Lauren shared.

"Yes, we worked together on the Manring account, doing some print ads for magazine circulation."

"Magazines," Sarah said, hoping she sounded enthusiastic. "That's exciting. People…read them."

"That's the idea," he said with a smile that indicated he had either somehow not picked up on her awkwardness or was ignoring it. He held his camera up. "I work more on the picture side of things, though."

"Right, of course."

"And you…play the piano, right?" he asked. "I hear you're good."

_Was good_ , she corrected him mentally. Playing piano was something Old Sarah had been good at. New Sarah was mostly good at things like moving bodies and washing blood out of her clothes. Saying that out loud probably wouldn't go over very well, however.

"I studied music in college," she agreed, settling for a middle ground between the truth and avoiding discussing what she currently did. "Would you excuse us? I just need Lauren to help me…fix my hair before the photos."

"Sure," he said, flashing them another smile before returning to the camera he was holding.

Once Sarah and Lauren were safely out of earshot in the kitchen, Sarah threw her hands up in exasperation. "What was that?" she asked.

"Um, a social disaster, apparently," Lauren said pointedly. "You're lucky you're pretty, you know."

Sarah winced. "Was it that bad?"

"That depends," Lauren said slowly. "Was that your first time ever speaking to another human?"

"Well, what do you expect? You—you ambushed me," Sarah accused her.

"I'm sorry," she said, not sounding particularly sorry at all. "But this was the best possible way for you to meet a potential date, right? It was a low-key setting, you didn't have time to get all stressed about it—which you know you would have, so don't even deny it," she said sternly when Sarah opened her mouth to protest. "And if you don't want to hear from him then I just won't give him your number. Easy breezy."

"Great. I don't want to hear from him," Sarah said immediately.

"Why not?" Lauren protested. "He's attractive, he's really nice, he has a great job, and he doesn't have any of the fatal flaws of your previous boyfriends, like collecting stamps or being really into Creed."

"He's not the problem. I am. I can't be going on dates with people right now."

"You said that you'd consider dating once Ronan was no longer following you around," Lauren pointed out. "And now he's not."

"Okay, that's true, but—"

" _And_ ," she pushed on before Sarah could argue, "wouldn't it be nice spend some time with a guy who—to the best of my knowledge—has zero ties to the seedy underbelly of Hell's Kitchen?"

"I  _am_  that seedy underbelly," Sarah reminded her. "The moment he goes on a date with me he  _will_ have those ties without even knowing it, and I can't put that on some innocent guy! Besides, am I just supposed to date someone while hiding an entire portion of my life from him?"

"It's not hiding. Everyone holds off on the more personal aspects of their lives until they've been dating a while. I dated Greg for eight months before I told him why I'm banned from every Applebee's in New York state."

"That's  _so not_  the same thing, Lauren."

"It's not the end of the world to not tell someone you're casually dating everything about yourself. And besides, you won't be working there forever."

"But I'll be there for the foreseeable future. A relationship just won't work."

"No one said the word relationship. Go on a few dates, have some fun. Dig out all of those tiny dresses that I used to borrow and will never be able to fit into again, and go out to dinner or dancing. Get  _laid_ ," Lauren said. Then with a glance at the baby in her arms, she added, "Use a condom."

Sarah exhaled, eyeballing her friend. Lauren looked so eager to set her up, always determined to make Sarah happy despite her protests. Would going on a date really be the worst thing in the world?

"Fine. One date."

"Great!" Lauren exclaimed, clapping her hands together. "I'll text him tonight and let him know you're interested. And assuming that you didn't just scare him away with your awkwardness, he should call you soon."

"This feels very middle school."

"Well, you are my daughter, apparently."

"I know you're still caught in the middle of everything, but I just figured with the immediate danger out of the picture...maybe you could get a little bit closer back to normal life," Lauren said hopefully.

Normal. There was that word again. She could do that. She could be normal. Couldn't she? After all, things were going well. Ronan was gone, Donovan was out of the picture. She was getting along with Matt, Lauren was setting her up with an attractive and normal guy, her father was going to get the care he needed. But if everything was going so smoothly, why did her chest still feel heavy with a strange sense of dread all the time?

"Earth to Sarah," Lauren said. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, sorry," Sarah said absently, snapping back to the present. "I, um…I'm just going to stay in here for a second and get some water."

"Okay," Lauren said, concern in her eyes as she studied her friend. "You aren't going to pass out again, are you? I cannot call a vigilante to come get you while my mother is around."

Sarah laughed. "I promise I'll remain conscious."

After Lauren left the kitchen and Sarah was alone, she leaned back against the fridge and closed her eyes.

She felt tense, like she was waiting for someone to pull the rug out from under her feet. This couldn't be right. This just wasn't how it went, this wasn't how life  _worked_ —you didn't get to kill people and threaten people and then receive promotions and get asked on dates. It was a trick of some sort; this wasn't what she deserved. Where was the punishment? Where was the harsh hand of karma waiting to smack her down?

"This is all a trap," she muttered out loud to herself.

"I feel that way every time Lauren's mother comes round," someone said.

Sarah let out a short, startled yelp and snapped her eyes open to see Greg standing in the kitchen doorway.

"Jesus, you scared me. What are you doing in here?" she asked, clutching her hand to her chest.

Greg gave her a look as he grabbed the coffee pot from the counter poured himself a cup

"Well you see, I live here," he explained patiently. "I don't know if you've heard, but Lauren and I are married. We have a child together, actually."

"Very funny."

"You might have met him, he's about the size of a loaf of bread," Greg said, retrieving a second mug from the cabinet and pouring Sarah a cup as well. "Constantly dressed up like a ballerina."

Sarah rolled her eyes as she accepted the coffee. "There's that dry, British sense of humor that no one loves."

"I keep fighting the good fight anyway," he said, leaning against the kitchen counter and surveying her over his mug. "So, I heard Lauren is working her magic and trying to set you up with Todd."

"Don't act like you weren't in on it, too. You two share everything," she said.  _Well, almost everything. Maybe not the secret vigilante stuff._

Greg chuckled, not bothering to disagree. "Well, he's a nice guy. And you're…acceptable, I suppose."

"Thanks so much," she said. "But I don't know how I feel about going out with someone Lauren set me up with. I've let her set me up before, and it's always been disastrous."

"But this time it has  _my_  stamp of approval as well," Greg reminded her. "And technically I've known you longer than Lauren has, so I have a better feel of these things."

"You've known me a total of two hours longer than Lauren," Sarah pointed out with a laugh. "And that's only because you helped me move into my dorm room. And then as soon as Lauren showed up and I introduced you to her, you dropped all my boxes and switched right over to her."

"I like blondes," he said with a shrug. "Point is, we both think that you and Todd would get on well."

"Well, I hope so. Because I already told Lauren I'd go out with him."

"Fantastic! I don't think you'll regret it," he said, but Sarah's reply was only a low hum of doubt.

There was the sound of the front door closing as Lauren's father finally arrived.

"Sounds like it's about time to begin," Greg said, glancing at the kitchen door and setting his empty mug in the sink.

"I'll be there in a minute."

Greg nodded and started towards the hallway, pausing to say one more thing before leaving the kitchen.

"I know you've been having a rough time of it lately, what with your dad and all," he said. "But maybe going out and doing normal things will be good for you."

"Yeah…maybe," she said hopefully.

"Give it a try. You deserve to be happy," he told her.

He flashed her a reassuring smile before disappearing through the doorway, and Sarah was left standing in the kitchen, trying to ignore the heavy feeling in her chest that told her he was wrong.

* * *


	28. Date Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, friends! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season full of everything you choose to celebrate, and that you're having an excellent New Year as well. I tried my best to get this chapter done before the end of the month, and I'm getting it in juuust before the deadline.
> 
> This chapter takes a bit of a break from Sarah's dad drama and police troubles to take a good look at some other conflicts in her life, because all anyone really wants for Christmas is angsty sexual tension.
> 
> PS: Today (the 31st) just happens to be my birthday, and if it's not too much trouble I'd love to make the same request as last year, which is that you let me know in your review what your favorite moments in the story have been. It's a fun way for me to look back over the last year of writing.
> 
> PPS: I didn't get a chance to edit this chapter yet, so I'm sorry if the grammar/transitions are little rough. I'll polish it up later!
> 
> I hope you enjoy the chapter!

 

In the following days, Sarah was quickly finding that working for both Jason and Vanessa was very time consuming. She hadn't quite managed to get the hang of juggling both sets of tasks yet, and it was taking its toll on her performance. This had not gone unnoticed by Jason, who had been in an increasingly bad mood the more Vanessa became involved in Orion business, especially given that many of the decisions she made were at odds with his own.

Sarah was at her desk around lunchtime, absently tapping her fingers on her desk and staring at her computer screen as she tried to finish up a spreadsheet when Jason emerged from his office. In one hand he was twirling an ornate silver letter opener, which he presumably had just used to open the thick envelope he was holding in his other hand. He was smiling, as usual.

"Sarah. Would you like to know what this letter says?" he asked, then continued before she could answer. "It's from Councilman Granger, saying he regrets that I couldn't make it to our meeting yesterday, and to kindly let him know next time if I'll be unable to make it." His smile grew more fixed. "The thing is, this was an important meeting, and I'm sure I wouldn't have missed it had I know it was happening."

Sarah's heart sank as she realized what had happened. She remembered talking to the councilman's assistant on the phone and writing down the date and time, intending to transfer it to Jason's digital calendar, but she'd gotten distracted by a courier who needed a signature for a stack of paperwork Vanessa had sent over.

"I'm so sorry, I—I must have forgotten to put it on your calendar."

"Yes, I realized that," he said, glancing at her still tapping fingers in annoyance. "Stop fidgeting."

Sarah nodded and stilled her hand.

"I wrote it down, and—and then I just forgot to transfer it over—"

"This was an important meeting."

"I know."

"When I encouraged you to take this promotion, it wasn't with the intention that you would begin neglecting your job here. I was under the impression that you could handle doing tasks for both myself and Vanessa."

Sarah didn't notice that she had started nervously tapping her fingers again, or the way that Jason's eyes locked onto her hand.

"I can," she insisted quickly. "I'll call right now and—"

With startling speed, Jason slammed the ornate letter opener down, embedding the sharp end into the wood of her desk in the small space between her middle and ring fingers. She jumped, letting out a startled scream before clapping her other hand over her mouth.

"I said to stop fidgeting," he told her calmly, his hand still on the letter opener.

Sarah stared in shock at the sharp metal instrument that had come only a fraction of a centimeter away from stabbing her through the hand. Then she looked up at Jason, who for once looked very serious.

"S-sorry," she stammered.

He held her gaze for another moment before the wide smile returned to his face.

"Kindly reschedule the meeting, and actually inform me of when it will be taking place this time. And send a nice note to the Councilman from me, apologizing for the carelessness of my staff."

Sarah nodded wordlessly, her throat tightening and making it difficult to speak. Jason threw the letter in the trash next to her desk and returned to his office.

Her gaze returned to the letter opener that was embedded ominously in her desktop. It wasn't exactly a hammer through the throat, but the violent implications were still there, and his sudden outburst stuck with her for the rest of the day.

* * *

Luckily, Sarah now had a new outlet for the increased stress that her job was putting on her: self-defense training with Matt. They'd agreed to meet at the boxing gym several times a week, with Matt insisting that she take a rest day in between meetings to recover. They'd had three sessions so far—including the one from weeks ago, though she'd already forgotten so much of what he'd taught her then. The sessions were intense, despite Matt's patience and his frequent reminders that she got to set the limits of what they did and how fast.

She believed him, but she hadn't yet reached the point of needing to tell him to stop, and their nights usually ended with her lungs burning and her entire body heavy with exhaustion. Yet despite the dull ache in her muscles and the certainty that it would only hurt worse the next morning, she felt good, like all of the anxiety that was always wound so tightly in her chest had been worn straight out of her. Getting a move right after many, many attempts gave her a feeling of accomplishment that she hadn't experienced in a long time. It was one she had usually associated with finally pulling off a particularly difficult piano piece.

By the fourth training session, they were both starting to find their footing—both figuratively, and in Sarah's case, literally. She still ended up getting knocked off balance fairly often, but not as much as before, and luckily for her Matt only took advantage of about half the opportunities he got to knock her on her ass.

They started off that night practicing with blocks and strikes, with her updating him on goings-on at Orion in between hits.

"—coming in sometime next week, but I don't know what dock," she said, aiming for his jaw.

"And you think they'll be bringing in people?" he clarified, dodging the hit.

"That's what Jason's emails—made—it—sound like—" Sarah said haltingly as she tried a few more times.

He blocked all three punches easily.

"You're swinging too wide. Stop telegraphing your moves," he told her for what felt like the millionth time that night.

Sarah bit back a groan. The incident with Jason earlier that day had left her with an itchy restlessness under her skin, and it was frustrating to have to repeat simple moves so many times.

"Yes, sir," she muttered under her breath with a roll of her eyes, despite the fact that she knew he was technically right.

Matt's lips curled into a smirk, letting her know he'd heard the remark. This was affirmed roughly three minutes later when she swung her arm too widely for his liking. His hand came up lightning quick to grab her forearm long before she had a chance to make contact. He swung her around on the spot, twisting her right arm around and against her back, where he held it just tight enough to be uncomfortable but not painful. His other hand locked around her left wrist, anticipating her plan to elbow him in the ribs before she could even try.

"Painful, but not the move you're supposed to be learning," he murmured lowly.

Sarah closed her eyes for a moment, trying to focus on the steps she was supposed to be taking. The way Matt's breath ghosted against her skin when he spoke in to her ear didn't help matters.

Instead of trying to pull away from his grip, she twisted into it like he'd showed her earlier, using her shoulder to help break the leverage he had on her arm. She probably didn't do it as fast as she should in real life, but Matt seemed satisfied that she'd gotten the form right, and he let her go.

She spun around to face him again and saw the smirk that seemed to be perpetually lingering on his face tonight had only grown more pronounced.

"Your face is going to get stuck that way, you know," she told him. Not that it would be the worst expression his face could get stuck in; the smirk suited him, matched the calm, cocky self-assuredness that seemed to automatically come over him when he stepped into the ring.

He shrugged, unconcerned. "Not like I'll ever have to look at it."

They continued this way for a while, alternating between her trying to hit him and attempting to block his own punches, which he threw her way much slower than she knew he usually did. Maybe it was that concerted effort to go easy on her, or maybe it was just dumb luck, but midway through their fight she took them both by surprise by managing to land her first hit on him.

She had been about to take a straight hit when she changed her mind at the last second and swung to the right instead. Before she realized what was happening her fist made contact with his mouth, and she felt the skin of his lip split open upon impact.

Sarah clapped both of her hands over her mouth in surprise. Matt seemed equally caught off guard for a moment, then spat a small amount of blood out onto the floor of the ring and grinned darkly at her.

"Good job."

"I'm sorry," Sarah said, her voice muffled by her hands. "Are you okay?"

Matt laughed, unfazed by the injury. In fact, he seemed to be genuinely pleased, which Sarah found to be a little alarming.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

She moved closer, going up on her tip toes to try to get a look at the bleeding area. "Let me see."

"Why? It's a split lip," he said, waving her away. "I do get hit worse than that pretty much every night, you know."

"Yeah, but not by  _me_."

Matt looked oddly amused by her reaction.

"Sarah. This is a good thing," he reminded her, but she just made a doubtful noise. With a sigh he dropped his hands to his sides to allow her to get a better look. She tugged him forward a few steps to bring him more into the overhead lighting and pressed her fingertips to his jaw as she tilted it upwards slightly. The skin at the corner of his mouth was split and bleeding, and the skin around it was an angry red, but it was nothing that wouldn't fade to normal shortly.

"Are you satisfied?" he asked in exasperation as she came down off her tiptoes to rest on her heels again.

"Mhm."

"This is not what you're supposed to do when you land a blow on your opponent."

"Noted."

Matt shook his head and wiped the blood from his mouth onto the cloth boxing tape wound around his hands.

As Sarah watched him, the fact that she had actually managed to hit him—even by accident—set in, and she had to bite her lip to keep from laughing, but the hitch in her breath gave her away anyway.

"Something amusing you?"

"I just can't believe I actually got you. You must be slowing down, Murdock," she said, her mouth curving into a small, teasing smile. "Maybe you're getting old."

They were both fully aware that if Matt was moving slower than usual, it was because he was being overly careful not to actually hit her. But much to her amusement, the insinuation earned her an offended look from him anyway.

"Old? I'm two years older than you," he protested.

"Apparently it's enough," she said with an innocent shrug, leaning back against the corner post as her grin grew wider. "Do vigilantes have a retirement age? Maybe it's time to pass the torch to some other crazy guy with superpowers."

"Uh huh," Matt said, slowly nodding. He stepped forward, closing the space between them, and casually took hold of the ropes on either side of her, loosely bracketing her in the corner of the ring. "Hey, speaking of time…what time is it, again?"

Sarah glanced at the clock on the wall, the smiling faltering when she saw that they actually still had twenty minutes left in their sparring session. "Uh…time to go, actually."

Matt cocked an eyebrow skeptically. "Are you sure?"

"Well, if you round up—"

"Nope," he said, taking her hand and pulling her away from her safe position in the corner of the ring. "Come on."

She groaned, wishing she had thought to look at the clock before deciding to taunt the guy she was stuck in the ring with. He flashed her a sharp grin that would have looked very much at home beneath the black Daredevil mask, a quick trace of the devil showing through, but the hand in hers was solidly  _Matt_ , and she found that it didn't make her nervous like it once might have.

"If I land on that mat one more time my whole back is going to be one giant bruise," she complained, but didn't resist as he towed her back towards the center of the ring, where he let her hand go.

"You know we'll stop if you say so."

He waited a beat to see if she would indeed tell him to stop, but she just fixed her ponytail and waited silently.

"Alright," he said. "Let's try the going back to the move you were struggling with earlier."

The move in question involved kneeing your opponent just below the rib cage, which Sarah had initially thought sounded kind of fun, but it turned out to be more difficult to get right than she had anticipated. She had a habit of going up onto the sole of her left foot whenever her right knee came up, which Matt continuously reminded her would sacrifice all of her balance. And when she didn't do it, she had difficulty hitting him as high on his torso as she was supposed to for maximum efficiency.

Despite hoping that her complaint about her back would result in some sort of leniency as far as flooring her went, Matt only let her make the mistake of going up on her heel twice before kicking her legs out from under her.

The second Sarah felt her feet leave the ground she snapped her eyes closed, expecting to feel the painful impact of her back against the mat. Instead, she was stopped by two hands on her upper arms, catching her just short of hitting the ground. She opened her eyes in surprise as she tried to catch her breath.

That sharp smile was back on Matt's face as he tugged her back up into a standing position with a laugh.

"You did that on purpose," she breathed out. "You're such a dick."

"Maybe," he admitted, grabbing onto the ropes and holding them up for her to slip through. "You did call me old."

That was true. Ironically, between his slightly sweaty hair sticking up and the wicked grin on his face, he looked younger than she'd ever seen him.

Once out of the ring, Sarah grabbed her water bottle from her bag and sat down heavily on one of the benches. With a tired groan, she laid back on the bench, stretching out along the length of it as she waited for her heartbeat to settle back to normal. She was already sore in her arms and the tops of her thighs, not to mention her back and her knuckles.  _Is this what people who work out feel like all the time?_

From her position on the bench she watched Matt lean against the outside of the ring and take a drink from his water bottle. It occurred to her that if she openly stared at a sighted person as often as she did Matt, they would probably think she was a serial killer. Somehow it didn't feel as creepy with him, despite the fact that she knew he could probably tell when she was watching. Maybe it was because he was so often analyzing everything about her from her walk down to her heartbeat, so by comparison staring didn't seem as invasive.

"You're actually pretty good at the teaching thing," she noted.

"Well, I just think about the way I was taught, and then do the opposite," he said with a wry laugh. "Saying I wanted to stop or slow down definitely wasn't an option. And I'm pretty sure if I'd ever paused to check on a split lip with Stick he would have knocked me out."

Sarah frowned and slowly sat up. She clearly remembered him stating that he'd been a kid when he started learning to fight, and what he was describing didn't sound like a child's lesson.

"How…how old did you say you were when you started training?" she asked hesitantly.

Matt seemed to realize that he'd said something he didn't intend to.

"Old enough to be a fast learner."

That sounded more like an avoidance of the question to her, but hey—she was the queen of that, so who was she to call him out on it? Her gaze fell on the yellowed  _Murdock vs. Creel_  poster on the wall.

"What about your dad? Did he ever teach you any of his boxing moves?"

"Ah…not on purpose," Matt said, his lopsided grin looking a little more melancholy than usual. "I picked up a few things, but he made it pretty clear that he didn't want me to do this kind of stuff."

"What did he want you to do?"

There was a pause as he frowned thoughtfully.

"Become a lawyer. Go to church. Not get into fights." Matt shrugged. "I got two out of three right, at least."

His tone was casual, but there was a stiffness to his posture that made her suspect this wasn't a subject he talked about very often. Her curiosity about his pre-Daredevil childhood days was killing her, but she didn't want to push him into a conversation that made him uncomfortable, so she dropped it.

"When do you want to come back here?" she asked.

"Thursday?"

Sarah almost said yes before remembering that she had plans Thursday night. Specifically, she had a date with Todd, the photographer Lauren had set her up with.

"I can't," she said. "I have to go do something Thursday night."

It wasn't a lie, exactly, which is possibly why it seemed to fly under Matt's radar. She wasn't sure why she didn't tell him, except that she didn't want to hear him voice the many reservations about going that she had already gone over in her head.

"Okay. We'll figure out a different day," he said.

Sarah nodded. She wondered briefly if it was a bad thing that she was looking forward to their next training session more than she was her date, but she quickly banished the thought from her mind.

* * *

Lauren came over on Thursday evening, presumably to help Sarah get ready for her date, but Sarah had a sneaking suspicion that it had more to do with wanting to get away from Cecilia for a few hours. Either way, she'd left Noah with Greg and shown up at Sarah's ready to try talking her into wearing various inappropriate outfits.

Of course, as it always did lately, the conversation eventually drifted away from lighthearted topics and towards Sarah's work life and corresponding life choices—specifically the self-defense lessons that had started back up. Lauren was struggling between being pleased that Sarah was learning to protect herself and alarmed by how she was doing it.

"Lauren, you already knew that he was teaching me this stuff," Sarah pointed out. She was sitting sideways on her dresser and using the mirror above it to apply her makeup.

"Yeah, but I thought maybe you changed your mind. You did one lesson and then never mentioned it again."

"Well, I got a concussion right after the first one, and then we were fighting, and then Ronan popped up, and now we can actually get back to it."

"Doesn't it make you nervous?" Lauren asked, her voice slightly muffled from where she was standing in Sarah's closet, rummaging through her clothing. "I got nervous just being in the same hospital room as the guy. I starting doing that anxious talking thing, which just made him more unfriendly, which made me more nervous. It was a vicious cycle, and I feel like it would be even worse in a boxing ring."

"No, I don't feel nervous. It actually…makes me feel less nervous," Sarah said thoughtfully as she screwed the top back on her mascara. "Like I'm actually doing something to keep myself safe instead of just hoping that he'll magically show up to help me next time someone tries to murder me. There are only so many times that can work, probably."

She wasn't quite sure how to explain it, the way she felt more in control in the ring with Matt than she did outside of it with anyone else.

Lauren emerged from the closet holding a silvery slinky dress that Sarah honestly didn't even remember buying. Sarah scrunched up her nose and shook her head.

"I'm glad you're learning this stuff, I just…don't know how I feel about your choice of teacher," Lauren said, tossing the dress into the reject pile on Sarah's bed.

"Okay, I know it's…unconventional."

"Unconv—" Lauren cast her eyes up at the ceiling in exasperation. "Sarah, I swear to God. Did you take a class in high school on being evasive and making ridiculous understatements?"

"Well, did you take one on—on being super dramatic?" she asked defensively.

"Yes, it was called drama class."

"I—okay, that's a real class, I guess," Sarah admitted.

"I just don't like seeing you all sore and bruised all the time."

"I'd be just as sore if I were taking a self-defense class at an expensive gym," Sarah pointed out. "Except I'd also be starving in order to pay the gym membership."

"Right, except gyms hire official, licensed instructors.  _You're_  choosing to go with a guy who straight up tortures people in his spare time, Sarah. Bad people, admittedly, but still. Not the most levelheaded choice of teacher."

"Is that your way of saying he's crazy?" Sarah asked. Lauren simply shrugged. "He's not crazy. You've been spending too much time with Cecilia."

"Okay, I'll give you that," she allowed. "Any time with Cecilia is too much time. But I'm just saying, he's out there beating people to a bloody pulp every night and then getting straight into a ring with you the next day. All it would take is for him to get a couple of his wires crossed in his head and the next thing you know he's snapped your neck."

"Of all the people you need to worry about snapping my neck, he's not one of them. But now if someone does try that, I can maybe semi stop them," Sarah said hopefully.

"Well that was…halfway reassuring," Lauren said, still sounding unhappy. "Okay, how about this one?"

Lauren held up the dress for inspection: it was a strappy little black dress that Sarah had bought with Lauren on a Christmas shopping trip a few years back. Unfortunately it was also backless, which didn't work with the bruises that ran down Sarah's spine from practicing. She shook her head.

"Maybe save that one for like…a third date."

"You're killing me Sarah," Lauren said, tossing the dress aside and returning to the closet.

"Sorry."

"Wait, wait, wait," Lauren voice got louder again as she re-emerged. "I didn't even realize you still  _had_  this! Wear this one, definitely."

Sarah turned to see which dress she was holding up. It was dark red with two delicate gold metal strands as the straps and a fluttery hemline that was just slightly shorter than what she was normally comfortable wearing. Then again, she was pretty sure she would be uncomfortable all night anyway; she was embarrassed to admit even to herself that she couldn't recall the last time she had gone on a first date totally sober, without having at least one or two drinks beforehand to calm her nerves. So if she was going to be uncomfortable anyway, why not dress to match her mood?

"Alright," Sarah agreed. "That one."

Later as she headed out the door, Sarah grabbed her purse to look for her keys, and as she reached inside the bag her hand brushed against a small card. Pulling it out, she flipped it over and saw that Allison's name and contact information were printed on the front. She frowned in bewilderment, positive that she'd tossed the card away onto the table back in the diner. She started to toss the card in the trash, but hesitated. Running her finger across the print on the front, she considered the card for a moment before placing it on her desk instead. She gave it a long look before leaving her apartment to meet up with Todd.

* * *

The date so far was going… _fine_ , she supposed. Todd had chosen a newly opened restaurant she had never heard of in the nearby neighborhood of Lenox Hill. The menu consisted of various trendy fusion dishes that looked good, though the prices listed were a good bit higher than Sarah had budgeted for.

Given that careers were one of the usual small-talk topics on most first dates, the fact that Sarah's was quite different from what he had originally thought came up fairly quickly. Interestingly, Todd didn't seem particularly surprised to hear that she had switched from piano playing to office work.

"Right, right," he said with an understanding nod when she explained her new job. "Well, I mean, that happens to most people at some point, right? It's no big deal. We all grow up with these great ideas about the perfect careers we'll have, and then it turns out the things you're passionate about don't always pay the bills. And I mean, music especially has got to be hard to actually make a career of. I'm sure there are a million people in New York with the same story—and hey, at least you had a career to fall back on."

She was vaguely aware that he intended to come across as encouraging, but part of her still wanted to correct him, to tell him that she hadn't quit music because she wasn't good enough at it. She wanted to tell him that she wasn't one of those million people who had big dreams without the talent or ambition to back them up, that she had actually made a successful career with steady money. But that would lead to questions she couldn't answer, and she couldn't very well discard the perfectly good excuse he'd just provided her for as to why she suddenly stopped playing music and got an office job. So instead, she turned the conversation away from herself altogether.

"Well, you seem to be doing alright while pursuing what you love," she noted. Todd worked in photography at the same advertising agency that Greg wrote copy for, which was how he'd agreed to take their baby photos for them.

"In a way," he acknowledged. "Advertisement wasn't my first choice of career, even though it pays well. When I first got into photography it wasn't with the intention of selling people expensive watches, but…here I am."

"What did you want to get into?"

"Everything," he said. "I wanted to travel all over and take photos for the Times, or National Geographic."

"So, why didn't you?" she asked curiously.

"It turns out that living the adventurous life is  _hard,_ " he said with a laugh. "In college, I did a semester abroad in France, and I got to shadow a professional photographer. I even went on a few trips around neighboring countries with him. And I found that I'm not cut out for sleeping on trains between cities and running to catch the perfect shot before the moment is over. Working in a studio with set times and lighting is much easier."

Sarah couldn't imagine how taking photos of people posing next to new cars was more exciting than traveling the world, but she supposed she could understand the desire to stay with something safe and comfortable. After all, weren't those the very things she was trying to get back to?

Her phone buzzed with an incoming text message midway through the date, but she waited a fw minutes until Todd was in the restroom to check it. It was from Lauren.

_'Sorry to interrupt your date! Especially if everything is going well',_ the text read, followed by a winky face and several suggestive Emojis. _'I forgot my shopping bag at your place and it has stuff I need for Noah in there. Can I stop by and get it?'_

After changing the locks, Sarah had given Lauren a new key to her place under the agreement that she stopped showing up unannounced—for her own safety and for Sarah's sanity. So she appreciated that Lauren actually remembered to text her and ask first.

_'Just lock the door when you leave',_  Sarah replied, quickly slipping her phone back into her purse when she saw Todd returning.

Later, after they'd left the restaurant—and after Todd had insisted on picking up the bill, much to Sarah's secret relief despite her offer to go dutch—they walked through the streets, enjoying the night air. Although Lenox Hill was only a short subway ride away from Hell's Kitchen, it felt like an entirely different city. The area hadn't been effected by The Incident as badly as Hell's Kitchen had, and it showed. Where she was used to seeing pawn shops and bail bond offices, this neighborhood had vintage bike stores and gluten-free artisan cupcake shops. Despite being dressed like she belonged there—and being accompanied by someone who definitely did—Sarah couldn't shake the self-conscious feeling of being out of place.

They ended up stopping at a nice coffee shop and settling into a table in the back corner. Unfortunately this placed them under the air conditioning, with Sarah hoping that her hot coffee would help quell the goosebumps rising along her arms as the air blew down directly on them.

"Are you cold?" Todd asked, noticing the way she crossed her arms tightly in front of her. "We can switch to a different table."  
"Hmm? Oh, no. I'm fine," she said with a smile. In reality, she didn't want to move because this was the only table in the coffee shop that didn't position her with her back to the room, and at what point had she become such a paranoid freak that something like that would bother her?

Todd gave her a skeptical look.

"You're shivering. Here," he said, shrugging his suit jacket off and draping it around her shoulders before she could protest.

"I—oh. Okay. Thanks," she said. That was one of those gestures that was supposed to send her heart skipping, wasn't it? But mostly she just appreciated the layer between her shoulders and the cold air above her.

"No, it's fine. Girls are always cold. It's adorable."

Sarah offered him a distant smile, distracted by the small voice of doubt in the back of her mind that was starting to pipe up. Was this just a lackluster date, or had she lost the ability to connect with normal people? Todd was attractive—very attractive, actually—with a good job, a sense of humor, and he genuinely seemed to like her. There was no reason for her to not be more excited to be going out with him. But something was  _missing_ , and she couldn't quite put her finger on what it was.

She tuned back in to find that Todd was looking at her as though he'd asked her a question.

"Sorry, what?" she said quickly.

"I asked if you hit your hand on something? It's all bruised up."

"Oh. No, just collateral damage from this fitness class I've been taking. It's, um, kind of intense, and I'm not very good at it so far," she said with a laugh. It wasn't completely a lie—the lessons were intense, and she wasn't very good.

"Is it CrossFit?" he asked, perking up a bit.

"Uhh, no, a different one," she said vaguely, hoping he wouldn't ask what the class was called. "But I…take it you do CrossFit?"

"Oh, yeah. I love it," he said. That was enough to set him off on a long speech about the many benefits of CrossFit. When Sarah's phone buzzed again with another text from Lauren, she was a little relieved.

* * *

On the other side of Hell's Kitchen, Matthew Murdock was having a bad night.

He'd caught wind of a major arms deal going down in an abandoned building that had once housed a restaurant, and the names involved were ones he already recognized as belonging to people he'd dealt with before.

The brawl itself hadn't been a problem; Matt was outnumbered but not necessarily outmatched. Four of the men went down easy without much of a fight, and two others managed to fire off a couple of missed shots from their guns before going down.

The last two men proved to be a bit more resilient.

One of them managed to catch Matt with a hard kick to the throat, cutting off his breath and momentarily stunning him. The other man took advantage of this to try to tackle him, but Matt dodged to the side and swung around, using the man's own body weight to yank him backwards. The two of them tumbled back against the large decorative window, which quickly gave out, sending them both crashing through the glass and into the small parking lot outside. The impact against the ground was hard enough that, had been able to see, he was certain there would be spots across his vision. His breath was immediately knocked out of his lungs, and drawing in air was made even worse by the previous hit to his windpipe, which made inhaling difficult and painful.

He was so focused on his inability to breathe that it took him a few moments to register the sharp pain spanning from his side to halfway across his stomach. After listening for a second to ensure that his opponent was still unconscious from the fall, he rolled over onto his other side to try to inspect the damage to his side. He'd landed on a particularly large and jagged piece of glass which had sliced clean through his shirt and dragged deeply across his skin, starting from just below the side of his ribcage and extending across his abdomen. The blood was quickly soaking through the fabric.

Matt was glad to hear sirens coming his direction, only two blocks away; it meant he didn't have to stick around until the cops got there. The large number of automatic weapons surrounding the unconscious men would be evidence enough. He stumbled away from the abandoned restaurant, in the direction of Sarah's apartment.

A wave of relief washed over him when he heard movement inside her place: a heartbeat coming from the living room. His landing on the fire escape was less graceful than usual, the impact rattling the rusting bolts that held it up and sending a hard jolt from his feet straight up to his pounding head, but he didn't care. The only thing he cared about at that particular second was what was waiting just on the other side of the glass: warmth and citrus scent and a voice he could listen to instead of the constant berating loop in his own head.

It wasn't until the woman inside took a few hesitant steps towards the window that he realized the footsteps weren't right. Neither was the heartbeat. Everything from her height down to her shampoo was different, though vaguely familiar. Through the glass he heard her swear under her breath as she caught sight of the vigilante leaning heavily on the rickety railing of the fire escape, his shoulders heaving with the effort of getting there.

"Holy shit," she whispered, and it was her voice that finally registered with him. With a start, he realized it was Lauren who was opening the window. She stared at him for a moment before speaking.

"Um…Sarah's not…here right now," she said awkwardly. "Are you—" Matt shifted, and he must have moved into the light because he heard her sharp intake of breath. " _Wow_ , that's a lot of blood."

"Do you know when she's coming back?" Matt asked impatiently, his voice hoarse from the hit he'd taken to the throat earlier.

"Not—not for a while, I think," Lauren replied. He could tell by her distracted tone that her eyes were still glued to his torn and blood-soaked shirt.

Gritting his teeth at the prospect of getting  _back_  across the city to his own apartment with a freely bleeding gash in his side, Matt shifted away from the window so he could leave. The movement tugged at the wound, and he couldn't help letting out a low hiss of pain as he felt it open up even more.

"Listen," he ground out. The jagged cut was bleeding more now, and he needed to use something to stem the flow. "Will you—will you just let me in so I can stop the bleeding?"

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, of course," she said, quickly stepping back to let him through.

He heaved himself through the window, wincing at the way his skin twisted as he did so.

"Do you know where she keeps her towels?" he asked, not wanting to search around for a linen closet.

Lauren disappeared down the hallway, where he heard her open and close a closet door. The towel she returned with felt cheap as she pressed it into his hands— _good_ , he thought. He wouldn't go broke adding this to the list of Sarah's belongings he needed to replace after ruining.

While he was preoccupied with positioning the towel to best stop the bleeding, Lauren retreated to the other side of the dining table, keeping a wary distance from him in much the same way she had in the hospital room. During their first meeting she had kept her hands wrapped protectively around her stomach, and this time she had adopted a similarly apprehensive stance, her arms crossed in front of her uncomfortably and her shoulders drawn and tense.

"So, do you, like…chill out there a lot when Sarah's not home?" she asked, clearly searching for a way to fill the silence. He kind of wished she wouldn't.

"I didn't know she wouldn't be here," he said as he pressed the towel to his abdomen. "Where is she?"

"She's on a date."

It took a second for her words to register, and when they did he was certain he must have misheard.

"She's on a…what?"

"A date," Lauren repeated. "You know…people get dressed up and talk about how many siblings they have and pretend like they going to art galleries. Is that something you superhero types do?"

Matt didn't answer, too busy processing what she'd just told him. The idea of Sarah going out on a casual date seemed so incongruent with the more dangerous aspects of her life that he was familiar with, and it completely threw him. Of course, that didn't explain why he felt strangely like he'd just been hit in the chest, but he chose to ignore that as much as he could for now.

"You're kind of the silent type," Lauren noted when he gave no response to her question. "That's good, probably. It helps with the whole mysterious persona thing. There probably aren't a lot of chatty crime-fighters. I think that's probably why I couldn't be a vigilante—well, that and because I go to the gym like, once a year, but it's a shame because I think I'd be really good at coming up with one liners to say while defeating bad guys because I used to watch a lot of Buffy."

Whatever Lauren was talking about, Matt wasn't really listening. Instead he was half-focused on the pain coursing through his side and half on wondering how he hadn't known that Sarah was seeing someone.

"—but I guess she probably won't mind being interrupted since you're, like…bleeding out and all."

"What?" he asked as he tuned back in, realizing she had stopped speaking.

"I figure you probably didn't come over here just so you could drip blood all over her floor," Lauren said. "And no offense but I'm  _really_  not great with open wounds, so if you need help we should probably tell Sarah you're here."

"Yeah," he agreed with a wince. He reached for the burner phone in his pocket. "I'll call her."

"Wait," Lauren said, shaking her head and pulling her phone out of her pocket. "The last thing she needs is her date asking why a tiny devil Emoji is calling her. I'll just text her."

Matt blinked behind his mask. He  _knew_  Sarah had him saved in her phone as something stupid. He wet his lips and shook his head in irritation, mentally filing the new information away as something to discuss when he wasn't bleeding copiously.

Lauren quickly typed out a message on her screen. A tiny 'swoosh' tone let Matt know her text was on its way to Sarah.

"If she doesn't reply in a few minutes I'll call her," Lauren said.

"Who, uh…who is she on a date with?" he asked, the casualness in his voice sounding horribly forced even to his own ears.

"His name is Todd."

"Todd," he repeated under his breath with a frown.

"Yeah. He took her out to this fancy new restaurant that just opened."

"It's…kind of far past dinner hour by now, isn't it?" he asked in what he hoped was a casual way.

However, he didn't need to worry, as Lauren seemed to interpret his question as a sign of annoyance rather than—well, whatever it was.

"I guess she's having a good time," Lauren said, her hair slipping against her jacket as she shrugged. "Good for her. I mean, I know what you guys are doing is important, but it can't be her whole life. She needs a release sometimes."

Matt's stomach did an odd flip as he tried not to think about what kind of release Sarah was possibly finding with her date right now.

Lauren's phone chimed, alerting her to an incoming text.

"Speak of the devil," Lauren said, looking down at her phone. She glanced up at Matt. "Not you."

"What'd she say?"

"She's on her way now. She got a cab."

Matt nodded, leaning his head back against the windowsill. Lauren hovered uncomfortably on the other side of the table, very clearly wanting to leave. He couldn't say he was her caution worked for the purposes of keeping his face hidden, so he didn't comment.

"You don't have to stick around," he told her.

"Even I can't justify leaving someone all alone while they're bleeding out," she said. Her phone chimed and she paused. "Um, on a scale of one to ten, how close would you say you are to kicking the bucket?"

"I'm not dying, I just need some stitches."

"So, like…a five?"

Matt sighed, going along with her. "Sure."

"Okay," she said, and from the sound of her thumbs tapping against her phone's screen she was relaying the arbitrary measurement to Sarah. "Good. Because I'm not trying to give you your last rites, and I'm pretty sure ghosts always haunt whoever was with them when they died."

Her mention of last rites caught his interest.

"Are you Catholic?" he asked curiously.

"Really? That— _that's_  what actually gets an interested response from you?" Lauren asked in disbelief. "Okay. Yeah, technically, I guess. I mean I was raised Catholic, but I'm like, way lapsed. I go to Mass on Christmas and Easter when my mother drags me along. Why?"

"No reason."

Lauren sighed. "You got my hopes up that I might get more than a two word answer for that, Leonard."

The corner of his mouth quirked up into a faint ghost of a smirk. "Maybe next time."

"Next time you're bleeding out in my best friend's apartment, you mean?" Lauren clarified.

Her phone's chime went off again, and Lauren made a confused 'hmm' as she read the text message.

"What's she saying?" Matt asked.

"Um…something weird about knowing the continents."

Matt laughed, though it quickly cut to a sharp inhale as the movement made more blood trickle out of his side.

"Tell her my head's fine. No concussion this time."

"This time," Lauren repeated as she relayed the message. "You guys seem to spend a lot of time piecing each other back together."

Matt didn't think he'd ever heard a better description of his relationship to Sarah.

"Yeah. We do."

"That's great," she muttered, probably unaware that he could hear her. "Seems safe."

He tilted his head.

"You don't like me very much," he said wryly. It was a statement more than a question.

"I don't  _dislike_  you. I just…don't know anything about you. Which I guess is the point. You're just a man in a mask. And for the most part I think you do a lot of good for this city. But the only two things I know about you are that you're really good at hurting people, and you spend a lot of time alone with my best friend."

"You think I'm going to hurt Sarah?"

"She says you won't."

"That's not what I asked."

Lauren hesitated, her breath faltering as she chose her words.

"I think…you already have," she said cautiously. "And I don't know if she's trying to protect you or me by pretending like you haven't, but she's not a very good liar either way."

There was a silence between them, broken only by Lauren's slightly nervous heartbeat.

"You're right. I have," he said quietly. There was no point in lying, and even if there was, it felt wrong to sit in Sarah's living room and lie to her best friend about his actions. "For what it's worth, it's you she's trying to protect. She thought she was putting enough on you by telling you about Orion, without trying to explain…how we were. At the beginning."

"But not now," Lauren said questioningly.

"No. Not now. Things…are different now. I wouldn't hurt her. I know you have no reason to believe me, but it's true."

"Of course I have reasons," Lauren said grudgingly. "Mainly that Sarah believes you, and she's not an idiot. She doesn't invest her time in people who treat her badly. And you have saved her life a few times, which is, like, a good thing, I guess."

Matt sensed that wasn't the end of what she wanted to say, so he waited through the ensuing silence between them, during which Lauren seemed to be torn between pushing him more and simply dropping it and leaving. He had often wondered what his penance would be for the things he'd done to Sarah when they first met, but this—bleeding out onto her windowsill while Lauren reminded him of the choices he'd made—seemed especially fitting. He'd thought it would be enough that he couldn't seem to shake whatever feelings he was having for someone he could never possibly be with, but this really drove the point home even better. It dug at a familiar feeling his chest, a dull but addictive pain, like pressing his fingers against a bruise.

"You can't ever touch her like that again," Lauren said, speaking very quickly as though to get her words out before she changed her mind. "You know that, right?"

"I know," he said immediately.

"She trusts you, and she never trusts  _anyone_ ," Lauren pressed.

"I know," he repeated, softer this time. He wasn't sure what else to add, but as it turned out, he didn't have to.

A familiar set of footsteps coming down the hallway caught his attention, and he closed his eyes in relief. His hands were starting to shake slightly from the blood loss and exhaustion, and he was looking forward to getting stitched up so he could go to sleep.

Once inside, Sarah paused for a second as she picked up on the tension between the two people in the room, but she ignored it in favor of coming over to check on Matt's condition.

As she came closer, Matt picked up on a few things he would have sensed earlier were he not focused on the pain in his side. Of course, he should have expected that she'd be dressed up coming from a date, but he hadn't really thought about it. But here she was, her hair in soft waves around her shoulders, which were bare except for the two thin, metallic straps of her dress. The hemline of the dress swished just above the knee as she crossed the living room, the sound of her heels clicking quietly against the hardwood floor. A light jasmine perfume lingered on her skin, slightly heavier around her wrists and neck where the warmth of her pulse altered the scent.

He cleared his throat and reminded himself that these things hadn't been put on for him. As if to reinforce that thought, he was hit by another scent underneath her perfume: the unmistakable trace of men's cologne—expensive, from what he could tell, and clinging to her skin in a way that made him grip the windowsill a little harder.

"Are you okay?" she asked, her voice tight with worry. He could feel her gaze traveling over him, from his masked face down to the cut in his sleeve, then over to the towel he clutched to his side, where she sucked in her breath sharply. He hoped Lauren had grabbed him a dark colored one, so that the blood soaking into it would look less alarming.

"Been worse," he said, pushing off of the windowsill he'd been using for support and standing up straight.

The moment he stepped away from the windowsill he'd been using to prop himself up, Matt was hit with a wave of dizziness. He stumbled just slightly, not quite enough to lose his balance. He immediately felt a hand on his waist and another on his chest as Sarah tried to steady him. Matt rested his hand on her shoulder, but he didn't realize he was leaning on her until he felt her sway a bit under his weight.

"Sorry," he mumbled, letting go of her shoulder and standing up straighter as his equilibrium slowly evened itself out.

"Hey," she said softly. "It's alright. You'll get to lie down in a minute." Now that he had regained his balance, Sarah pressed her hand to his cheek as she inspected the side of his mask, which he was just now realizing was sticky with blood from the cut on his hairline. "You're bleeding through your mask."

Matt didn't move, painfully aware of the heat of her fingertips on his skin and how much he was tempted to lean into her touch. But Lauren was in the room, and Sarah was covered in someone else's cologne, and he really did need to lie down soon.

"It's fine. I've just had a long night. I, uh…could use a few stitches," he said, offering her an apologetic grin.

"Yeah, I guess it is your turn, isn't it?" she asked with a tightness in her voice despite the joke.

"Lauren," Sarah said, looking over her shoulder to where her friend was hovering nearby. "Can—can you do me a favor? Lay a couple towels down on my bed and grab the first aid kit out from under the bathroom sink."

"What? Oh, um—yeah, of course," Lauren said, before her footsteps disappeared down the hallway.

Still holding onto his waist, Sarah slipped her heels off and kicked them into the corner, bringing her back down to the height he was used to her being at. She took his hand—the one that wasn't clutching a now well-soaked towel to his side—and brought it back up to her shoulder, curling her fingers through his. Matt tilted his head questioningly, wondering why she was still trying to keep him steady now that he clearly had his balance, but not complaining.

"Come on," she said very quietly, so that only he could hear. "Don't worry about figuring out where things are."

With a rush of gratitude, Matt realized that she wasn't trying to keep him upright at all. Having Sarah to guide him along allowed him a welcome recourse from having to sense out the obstacles between the window and her bed, and kept him from giving away his lack of sight in front of Lauren. He squeezed her shoulder gently in thanks.

They slowly made their way to her room, Sarah taking careful steps backwards as she guided him through the living room and down the hallway. She stayed close to him, never leaving more than a couple inches between them. They reached the bedroom just as Lauren did, and she slipped by them to set the first aid kit on the nightstand and spread two bathroom towels across Sarah's comforter.

"Thanks, Lauren," Sarah said.

"Yeah, it's…no problem," Lauren said distractedly. She stood still, and Matt could feel her gaze on the two of them, though it was difficult to tell what her expression was. She seemed transfixed by the sight of them. "Do you guys…need anything else? Like a…surgeon or something? A mob doctor?"

"I think we're good, Lauren. Thanks for helping."

"Right. Well this has been weird, and I'm going to go away now," she said awkwardly. "Text me tomorrow, okay?" Sarah nodded in confirmation, and Lauren turned her attention back to Matt, giving a hesitant wave. "I hope you, um…stop bleeding soon," she said awkwardly.

Despite the pain in his side, Matt chuckled. "Yeah, me too."

And then she was gone, leaving a bleeding Matt and a dressed up Sarah alone in the room.

* * *

As much as Sarah loved Lauren, she was glad at that moment to see her go. Between the blood-soaked towel Matt was clutching to his side and the fact that he would undoubtedly ask her where she had come home from, Sarah had enough things needing her attention without worrying about slipping up in front of her friend. Besides, having the two of them in the same room was strange for her, and now things were back to what she was used to: just her, Matt, and a first aid kit to fix up whichever one of them was injured that night.

Besides, Lauren hadn't been able to stop staring at them with an odd expression on her face, like she was piecing together a difficult puzzle, and Sarah got enough of feeling like she was being x-rayed from Matt without getting it from her best friend, too.

As soon as the front door closed, Matt reached up and pulled his mask off. Sarah couldn't help but notice that his hands were shaking just slightly, and now that his whole face was visible she could see that he was paler than usual. She tried to ignore the nervous twinge in her chest at the sight.

"Okay. Can you get your shirt off without pulling at the cut too much?" she asked.

Matt nodded, then slowly reached up and pulled his shirt over his head. Sarah blinked, suddenly not sure where to look. She would have thought it would get less awkward each time he took off his shirt around her, not more. He draped the bloody shirt over her desk chair before lowering himself onto the towels laid out on the bed., where he looked incredibly out of place, with his heavy combat boots and bloody skin serving as a stark contrast to her pale blue blanket and floral patterned pillows. It would have been almost funny in any other circumstance.

She settled onto the edge of the bed next to him and opened the first aid kit that rested on her nightstand.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Went through a window," he answered, wincing as she pressed a damp cloth to the wound to clean it. "Thought I'd come here to get fixed up. I didn't realize it wasn't you inside until Lauren was already at the window."

"What, uh…what did you guys talk about?" she asked. Neither of them had seemed especially friendly when she had come through the front door.

"It was mostly Lauren who did the talking," he replied. That was unsurprising, but also didn't particularly answer her question.

"Things…seemed kind of tense when I came in," she pushed hesitantly. She couldn't imagine they'd been talking about anything other than her, so she didn't feel like this really counted as being nosy. The mirthless laugh Matt breathed out didn't help her curiosity.

"Yeah, you could say that." He was quiet for a beat. "She doesn't trust me around you."

Sarah pursed her lips, scrutinizing Matt's face. It held that carefully blank expression that always drove her insane, but she knew he must be thinking about whatever Lauren had said to him.

"I know. Lauren can be kind of…standoffish sometimes," Sarah explained, pushing her hair behind her ear. "She takes a while to warm up to people. And I don't know if you're aware of this, but you can take a while to warm up to."

He let out a small huff of amusement, but it was laced with bitterness. "That's a diplomatic way of phrasing it. But I don't think she's going to warm up anytime soon. She's…understandably upset about parts of our history."

The careful way he chose his words gave away exactly which parts he was talking about. Sarah couldn't say she was exactly shocked that Lauren had figured that out, though she wished she hadn't. Lauren was bound to focus in on that one aspect of their relationship, but it wasn't their whole story.

"I'll talk to her," she said. "I can try to explain—"

"No," Matt cut her off, and she blinked at the sharp edge of insistence his tone. "Don't do that."

"What? Why not?" Sarah asked, confused by his reaction. Did he think she was going to tell Lauren too much?

"I don't want…" Matt shook his head and started again, this time speaking slower but more emphatically. "It's not your job to—to play down the things I've done to you. You don't need to try to make anyone feel better about mistakes I made. Not me, not Lauren. That's not  _ever_  on you to deal with, alright?" he said with surprising intensity. "It's on me."

Sarah took a breath, casting her eyes up at the ceiling. Of all the—admittedly numerous—aspects of Matt's personality that were difficult to deal with, his inexhaustible reserves of guilt had to be one of the most frustrating. With Matt's obsessive dedication to his convictions—so driven that he spent not just his days searching for justice but his nights as well—it was easy enough to see that he replayed every transgression in his head on a loop, and it seemed as though ones involving her made the rounds often. She didn't know how to walk that line between making it clear she forgave him without sounding like she was excusing him. She could see him constantly struggling to be better, and she wished she could help ease his mind, but God knew where she would even begin to try.

"Okay," she said with a sigh. There was no point in arguing when she had to focus on what she was doing. "Stay still."

They didn't talk for a few minutes as Sarah busied herself with cleaning the wound, which spanned from just under his rib cage down across his abdomen. It was a nasty wound, Sarah could only imagine how painful it had to be. He didn't make much noise as she applied disinfecting alcohol, just wincing occasionally at the sting.

"So…how was your date?" he asked after she had finished cleaning the wound.

Sarah bit her lip, stalling until she was done sterilizing the needle before she answered.

"Lauren really does like to talk, doesn't she?" she asked, waiting for Matt to ask her why she'd avoided telling him about it, and knowing that she didn't really have any logical answer to give him.

"I think I would have put two and two together anyway. You're dressed…differently than normal," he said carefully.

Sarah's was suddenly very aware of how revealing her outfit was.

"I wasn't sure if you would notice that."

His eyebrows went up a fraction, and he gave her a crooked grin. "Difficult not to."

Sarah had no idea what to do with that, so she very purposefully ignored it, focusing instead on gathering the rest of what she needed to start stitching Matt's side back together.

"What else did she tell you while you guys were gossiping about me?"

"Just that you were out on a date with someone. Tim, or…Tony," he hazarded with a shrug.

"Todd," she corrected him. "He works with Lauren's husband."

"Doing what?"

"Photography. I guess he's pretty successful at it."

"I can tell. His cologne smells expensive," he said lightly.

Sarah stilled at that, her eyes flicking up to his face, but his expression was neutral. His tone wasn't accusatory, so she had no idea why she felt oddly caught out by the comment. Her face heated up as she remembered that Todd had draped his suit jacket over her, so of course his scent would be on her, and of course Matt would pick up on it. God, what direction had her life taken that she wasn't surprised by that? She thought by now she had gotten mostly used to Matt's unnerving perceptiveness, but if the way her skin was heating up right now was any indication, that apparently wasn't the case.

She cleared her throat and went back to what she was doing.

Sarah had worn her hair down for her date in order to help hide the fading scar on her neck, and she now wished that she had tied it back to keep the sleek strands out of her face. It was too late now that her hands were covered in blood, and no matter how many times she shook her hair back over her shoulder, it kept falling in front of her face as she tried to focus on stitching up Matt's cut.

"Sorry," she murmured after the fourth time her hair got in the way, brushing against his chest as she leaned over him. Matt reached up and swept her hair out of the way, gathering it in his hand and holding it to the side of her neck while she worked. Her fingers stilled for a second, the needle in her hand hovering over his skin, before she resumed her task. Having the hair out of her face helped with visibility, but his hand in her hair proved to be just as much of a distraction.

"You've gotten better at this," he noted.

"I've been practicing," she said absently.

"On who?" he asked, amusement and slight surprise evident in his voice. "Are people lining up to let you put needles through their skin?"

"Not on people," she clarified. "Mostly on fruit."

"Fruit?"

"Yeah. Like, um, mangos and oranges. Which isn't really the same thing, obviously, but it's helped me get the stitches straighter, and hold my hands steadier. The stuff I read said to practice on raw meat because it's closer to the real thing, but that seems super gross and meat is expensive. And I've been watching some YouTube videos, which are helpful, but also they always seem to have a bunch of anesthetic on hand and I don't think I can get any of that without getting put on some sort of watchlist somewhere." The more she explained it, the weirder it sounded to her own ears. This was confirmed as she felt vibrations in Matt's chest, and glanced up to see that he was laughing softly, his eyes now closed and the corner of his mouth pulled up. "…and you're laughing at me."

"No, no. I'm sorry," he said, still grinning as he adjusted his hand in her hair to catch a few more strands that had come loose. The calloused pad of his thumb brushed against her temple as he brought her hair to the side again, holding it in place. "I just didn't realize you'd been putting in so much effort."

"Well, I can't keep disfiguring you like that every time I have to help you stitch up a cut, so I don't have much of a choice, do I?"

"You have a choice," he told her quietly. "A lot of people would choose not to help a guy who keeps showing up injured on their fire escape."

"Well, you're the exception," she told him. "All the other guys who fall through my window get second-rate medical treatment, if anything."

Matt laughed, but the sound hitched in his throat and quickly turned into a coughing fit. He brought his arm up to cover his mouth, and when he brought it away she could see fresh blood on his skin.

"Is that blood?" she said, alarmed by the sight. "What—why are you coughing up blood? Do you have internal bleeding or something?"

"No, it's fine—"

She smacked him on the arm. "Matt, you have to tell me if you have internal bleeding! I don't know how to help with that!"

"I don't have internal bleeding," he said with a dismissive grimace. "Although you hitting me doesn't help," he added resentfully.

"I should call Claire," she said, starting to get up.

Matt caught her wrist as she moved to stand, tugging her back down onto the bed. He didn't let go once she was seated next to him again, his thumb settling into place against her pulse.

" _Sarah,_ " he said firmly. "I'm fine."

"But—"

"I got kicked in the throat," he explained calmly, as though that were a normal thing to happen. "It's just a burst blood vessel, I swear."

Sarah chewed her lip as she regarded him, trying to ascertain if he was telling the truth.

"I'm not a doctor, Matt," she said softly.

A familiar look of guilt crossed his face and he let go of her wrist. "I know, I'm sorry. I should ask you to do things like this—"

"No, that's not what I mean," she said, closing her eyes and shaking her head. "You do the same for me all the time, of course I want to help you. But…I don't have medical training, and I don't have superpowers. I can't tell how bad your injuries are unless you tell me, and all you do is pretend like nothing is wrong with you. I can't help you with something if you're keeping it a secret."

He let out a sharp laugh. "There's a lot of things you can lecture me on, Sarah. Keeping secrets isn't one of them."

Sarah winced. He had a point. She didn't have any rebuttal to that, so instead she remained silent as she finished up the last few stitches and grabbed some gauze from the first aid kit to bandage the wound.

"I wasn't trying to keep it a secret," she said suddenly as she unwound a length of gauze from the roll. "Where I was tonight."

"I didn't say you were," he said.

"I know, but…if you were thinking it. That's not what I was trying to do."

Matt was quiet for a beat. "Okay. Noted."

"I just—I felt kind of stupid for going on a date right now," she continued. "Like I should be focusing on more important things. And I know Ronan is gone and Donovan's not a threat right now but it doesn't mean my life is exactly a safe haven, and who I am to put some poor guy in danger because I want my life to be more normal? And…I figured if I was already thinking all of those things, god knows what  _you_  would be thinking. I was so close to talking myself out of going already that if you'd said it was a bad idea I probably wouldn't have gone. So I just didn't mention it."

"You don't need my approval to go on a date," Matt said. "It's none of my business who you go out with."

"I know that," she said defensively. "I'm not saying it is your business, I'm just saying that—you know—if you have…an opinion, I'd…like to hear it."

"And if it's an opinion you don't like?"

"I'll deal," she said. "I just…want to know if you think it's too dangerous. Because he seems like a nice guy. I'd really like to not get him killed just for going out with me."

Matt opened his mouth to respond, and even before he spoke she already knew what his opinion would be. She recognized the familiar signs of disapproval in the set of his mouth. She'd seen it before, though usually when she was doing something he deemed unsafe, like insisting on staying in her own apartment or accepting the job offer from Vanessa.

She bit her lip, already prepared to hear him say that she was being reckless, that normalcy just wasn't in the cards for her right now and she had no business endangering an innocent person in her attempts to achieve it. All things that she had already told herself, but hearing them from Matt would be different. After all, she spent all her time criticizing herself; Matt rarely ever did. Despite his infuriating unpredictability, his opinion mattered to her. She generally tried to conceal that fact, but it became painfully apparent to both of them now as she waited for his response.

Matt paused, noticing the way she deflated slightly in disappointment. After a second he closed his mouth again, rubbing a hand over his mouth.

"No," he said finally. "I—I don't think that. I think that…after everything you've gone through, you deserve something normal and happy. And if he has a chance of giving you that, you should date him."

Sarah smiled. She wasn't entirely sure he was being truthful, but it meant something that he said it.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I mean as long as he's, you know…" Matt fidgeted uncomfortably with the blanket under his fingers. "…nice to you."

Sarah gave him a strange look, then laughed. "Yeah, Matt. He's nice to me."

"But you'll let me know if he's ever not," he said. "Or if he just…gets on your nerves. Takes you to a restaurant you don't like."

"Oh, no," Sarah said with shake of her head. "I don't need to get a reputation as the girl who has an overprotective vigilante beat up all of her disappointing dates."

"Why not? Then no one will take you on any more bad dates. Problem solved."

"No one will take me on  _any_  dates," she corrected him laughingly. He didn't look entirely unhappy at the idea. "Besides, it's all hypothetical anyway." She was positive that her quick exit earlier had come off the wrong way. Everyone knew that 'my friend has a medical emergency' was the oldest trick in the book for getting out of a date; it just happened to be her luck that it was true. "I did ditch out on our first date, so…who knows if he'll even be interested in another."  
"If he has any sense."

She smoothed the bandage out against his skin; the area was large enough that it took more than one. She must have pressed a little too hard while applying the second bandage, because he inhaled sharply, gritting his teeth.

"Sorry, sorry," she said softly. "Are you alright?"

He offered her a tired grin. "You don't need to worry about me."

There were any number of things she could have pointed out that were wrong with that statement: That he was currently laying on a pile of towels covered in his blood; that his side was being held together by a series of messy amateur stitches; that this wasn't an unusual circumstance for him to find himself in. But she knew those points, like any mention of his inability to remain uninjured, would be quickly and easily discarded.

"Do you let anyone worry about you?" she asked.

Matt gave a vague, uncomfortable shrug and grimaced, though she suspected he might have intended for it to be a disarming smile. His fingers were still worrying the edge of her blanket, picking at the loose threads in what she had long ago learned was a tell of his.

Watching him, Sarah was hit yet again with the realization of just how alone Matt was. He had Foggy and Karen, but they also clearly had each other, and Sarah understood the difference; after all, her two closest friends were also in love. And he had Claire, but the nurse very clearly kept her distance from Matt emotionally. Something Sarah had never quite been able to do. Perhaps that was why they'd managed to get under each other's skin so easily, worked their way into each other's lives without even really meaning to. She knew how much being so alone hurt, and she hated seeing it in him.

Experimentally, she reached out and touched the edge of the scar she'd left when she had stitched him up for the first time, back in his living room months ago. She could feel his muscles tense slightly under her touch, but he didn't move away. Instead, his fingers stopped twisting the cover as he went very still. Not sure what, exactly, she was trying to test, Sarah continued moving her fingers, tracing them along the jagged scar that ran down his chest. She flicked her eyes up to gauge his reaction and saw his jaw tick once, then twice; usually a sign of anger, but this time it was something different.

A loud car alarm blared in the street below her window, breaking the tense silence that had settled over them, and Sarah quickly retracted her hand.

Matt cleared his throat, but when he spoke his voice was still rough, which she firmly chose to attribute to him having been recently kicked in the neck. "Do you mind grabbing me a glass of water?"

"Sure," she said a little too quickly, standing up and exiting the room.

Sarah shook her head as she waited for the glass to fill. She was painfully, painfully aware of how her heartbeat had picked up and how Matt could undoubtedly still hear it from the other room. What on earth had compelled her to do that?  _It's this goddamn dress._

Back in her room, she handed him the glass of water, being careful not to let her fingers brush against his as she did. He was sitting up now on the edge of her bed, and he didn't look quite as pale as before. When he finished the water he set the glass down on her nightstand and reached over for his tattered shirt.

"Thank you," he said. "For stitching me up again."

Sarah frowned as she realized he was preparing to leave. Was he really going to go jumping over rooftops with fresh stitches in his side?  _Stupid question. Of course he is._

"You can stay a while," she offered. "I can order food."

He gave her a crooked smile, but there was a sadness to it that she didn't quite understand.

"Thanks. But I don't think I should," he said.

"Oh," Sarah said, surprised that she felt a little hurt by the rejection. "Um…okay."

"I just have an early morning tomorrow," he explained, not sounding particularly convincing. He slowly pulled his shirt back on over his head.

"Yeah. Of course," she said quickly, tucking her hair as she watched him. She followed him into the living room, where he donned his mask again and climbed through the window with less grace than usual.

Once out on the fire escape, Matt turned and hesitated as his hands lingered on the latch to pull it down.

"Hey," he said quietly, but there was no real need to get her attention; Sarah was already watching him from where she stood on the other side of the living room. She waited to see what he had paused to say.

"Yeah?"

"…what color is it?" he asked. "Your dress."

She studied him for a long moment, scrutinizing his face for signs of what he was thinking, but the task was difficult enough when she could see his entire face—with his mask on it was impossible.

"Red," she answered finally.

Matt looked like he was about to say something else, but instead he pressed his lips together, gave a slow nod, and slid the window closed.

Even after he was gone, the tension from his presence lingered in the room, and Sarah realized with a start that maybe this—this constant, simmering tension that always hung over even their most relaxed moments— was what had been missing from her date. And that realization opened the door to several other questions that she didn't think she was quite ready to examine yet.

"Oh," she whispered to the empty room.

That complicated things.


	29. Temptations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A long author's note, but please read! 
> 
> Hi, guys! I know it's been a few months since I last posted (is anyone still here?) and I'm really sorry. Please know that if you've left a comment in the last few weeks and not gotten a reply, it's not because I'm trying to be rude. I've just been super overwhelmed, and I promise that I'll go back and reply in the next few days.
> 
> When I started writing this story almost two(!) years ago, I was comfortably employed at a job that I enjoyed, and that left me a good amount of time and energy to write in my spare time. I didn't expect when I began this fic that I would end up getting laid off and having to work multiple jobs that leave me exhausted and with very little time to write. That absolutely does not mean I'm going to abandon the story, I promise! But it does mean that I really can't afford to make writing fanfiction a top priority, so updates might be slow. But I'm doing the best I can!
> 
> Parts of this chapter aren't what I wanted them to be, but there are other parts I'm really happy with, so I'm posting it now and I might go back and fix what I don't like later. It's a bit of a toned-down transition chapter, but I made sure to throw in a scene I've been saving for a while to make it worth the read.
> 
> PS: Thank you so much for fulfilling my birthday wish and leaving notes about your favorite scenes. Some of you surprised me—in a good way!—by citing scenes I wouldn't have guessed. The overall message I got was that you guys have really enjoyed seeing our two lovebirds get beaten up and then fix each other back up. Poor Sarah has gotten the majority of the injuries in this story it seems—the downside of being a rookie to the crime-fighting game—but expect some Matt whump soon enough.
> 
> PPS: I've gotten really bad about giving shout outs to fan works at the beginning of chapters, but there are amazing new playlists, drawings, and even a TV Tropes page for you to check out, and they're all on my profile either on here or FFN. I'll give a proper list of who made what next chapter!
> 
> Hope you enjoy the read, sorry for the wait!

**A long author's note, but please read!**

Hi, guys! I know it's been a few months since I last posted (is anyone still here?) and I'm really sorry. Please know that if you've left a review or a PM (and some of you have sent me some really lovely ones) in the last few weeks and not gotten a reply, it's not because I'm trying to be rude. I've just been super overwhelmed, and I promise that I'll go back and reply in the next few days.

When I started writing this story almost two(!) years ago, I was comfortably employed at a job that I enjoyed, and that left me a good amount of time and energy to write in my spare time. I didn't expect when I began this fic that I would end up getting laid off and having to work multiple jobs that leave me exhausted and with very little time to write. That absolutely does not mean I'm going to abandon the story, I promise! But it does mean that I really can't afford to make writing fanfiction a top priority, so updates might be slow. So if you're tempted to leave a comment about giving up on this story, please remember that I am barely getting by on paying my rent and bills, and that I'm doing the best I can with the free time I have.

Parts of this chapter aren't what I wanted them to be, but there are other parts I'm really happy with, so I'm posting it now and I might go back and fix what I don't like later. It's a bit of a toned-down transition chapter, but I made sure to throw in a scene I've been saving for a while to make it worth the read.

PS: Thank you so much for fulfilling my birthday wish and leaving notes about your favorite scenes. Some of you surprised me—in a good way!—by citing scenes I wouldn't have guessed. The overall message I got was that you guys have really enjoyed seeing our two lovebirds get beaten up and then fix each other back up. Poor Sarah has gotten the majority of the injuries in this story it seems—the downside of being a rookie to the crime-fighting game—but expect some Matt whump soon enough.

PPS: I've gotten really bad about giving shout outs to fan works at the beginning of chapters, but there are amazing new playlists, drawings, and even a TV Tropes page for you to check out, and they're all on my profile. I'll give a proper list of who made what next chapter!

Hope you enjoy the read, sorry for the wait!

* * *

If there was anything Sarah excelled at, it was avoidance.

Currently she was on her way to her dad's to fill out paperwork for his admittance into a care home, and the subject she was trying to avoid thinking about was the same one that had she'd been avoiding thinking about all week: Matt Murdock. Specifically, the uncomfortable realization that at some point she had stopped thinking of him as just her friendly neighborhood vigilante.

Her plan for dealing with this newfound knowledge was to distract herself by throwing all of her effort into taking more steps towards a normal life. And one of those steps was to contact Allison about her party. She'd been thinking about it since the socialite had made the offer, and she'd finally decided that it was something she should try, at least. Fishing her phone out of her purse, she brought up Allison's email, which she had gotten from the mysteriously reappearing business card.

_'Hi, Allison. If you still need someone to play piano for your fundraiser, I'd be happy to do it. Just let me know the details. -Sarah'_

As soon as she hit the send button on the email, her phone dinged. Sarah frowned; even Allison wasn't that quick to reply. Looking down at her screen, she saw that it wasn't an email alert at all; it was a text message from Todd.

She hadn't talked to Todd since their lackluster date a few days ago, which she had awkwardly ditched out on to go help a bleeding masked man. So she was fairly certain his text was going to be along the lines of letting her know she owed him the cost of an overpriced dinner and gourmet coffee. Biting her lip, she opened the message.

_'Had a great time the other night—sorry that you had to leave so soon. I'd love to take you out again if you're free.'_

Sarah narrowed her eyes at the text suspiciously. Why on earth would Todd want to see her again after how badly last time had gone? Something must be wrong with him. Maybe he was a serial killer— _was_  he a serial killer? Sarah paused, considering it for a minute, then shook her head. No, probably not. Maybe he just had very low standards for good dates?

Then again, just because she hadn't had the best time didn't mean he hadn't had fun. He had seemed to enjoy talking about himself and hadn't seemed to bothered by spending way too much money for a restaurant that served drinks in mason jars. And if she thought about it, the date itself hadn't really gone that badly, save for her awkward exit. It was mostly just the constant train of anxious thoughts traveling through her own head the whole time that had ruined it.

She hesitated, her thumbs hovering over the screen. The idea of a second date didn't really excite her, but it didn't fill her with dread, either. Maybe whatever fog she'd been living in wasn't going to lift on its own; maybe this discomfort was just because she hadn't been dating for a while, and it was just something she needed to push through. Could she really complain about not being able to live a normal life if she wasn't even willing to put in the effort of going on a second date?

Before she could talk herself out of it, she quickly drafted a reply text that she thought sounded like something a normal person would send.

As she slipped her phone back into her purse, she was caught off guard when someone holding flyers stepped into her path. Sarah automatically began to shake her head, thinking this was another person trying to cajole her into coming to their soul cycle class or buying their mix CD. But when she looked up, it was a middle-aged woman with glasses and dark hair peppered with grey.

"I'm looking for my son; he's missing," the woman said, pressing the paper into her hands. "Please—take a flyer."

Sarah glanced down at the handout, expecting to see a photo of a child, and froze when she saw Aaron McDermott's face looking back up at her instead. She stopped in her tracks so quickly that an elderly man walking behind her knocked into her, swearing at her as he continued on his way.

"Have you seen him?" the woman—McDermott's mother—asked eagerly, encouraged by Sarah's strong reaction to the photo.

Sarah finally managed to tear her eyes away from the familiar face on the flyer. "No, I'm sorry. I—I just wasn't expecting to see…"

"A police officer?" she finished for her. "I know. He's missing. He's been missing for weeks and weeks now. His work says they're doing everything they can, but if that's true why haven't they found him yet?" Mrs. McDermott asked, a pleading note in her tone that people got when they knew no one had answers for them, but were desperate for one anyway.

"I'm—I'm sorry," Sarah said, not knowing what else to say. "I'm so sorry."

"He's my only child," she confided. It was information Sarah immediately wished she didn't know. "I spoiled him growing up."

Sarah averted her gaze, looking away from Mrs. McDermott and back down at the photo, but it didn't help. It didn't matter if she looked at the woman in front of her or the man on the flyer; either way she was met with the same pair of eyes.

Of course McDermott hadn't existed in a vacuum; he'd had family, friends. For all she knew, Ronan had probably had family somewhere as well. They had both occupied a space on this planet that didn't just consist of making her life miserable—although they had both certainly had done that.

"If you see or hear anything about him—please contact me," she implored Sarah.

Sarah's throat was tight, and she only managed to nod before quickly continuing down the sidewalk. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that McDermott's mother had already latched onto another pair of passersby, fervently explaining her situation to them as they awkwardly tried to keep walking.

She tore her eyes away from them and turned forwards again, but the encounter lingered with her for a long time.

* * *

Later that night, Matt also had an incident that shook him—for different reasons.

He had been trying to track down a group that had been targeting medical supply shipments at the docks to sell the drugs themselves for much higher. The guy he'd caught up with that night was low-level in the group, he could tell. But he definitely knew who the others involved group, and Matt was willing to bet that it wouldn't take too much effort to get it out of him. He was small and shifty, the type to say whatever he had to to get out of the situation in one piece. Getting people like him to talk was never a problem—parsing out what was the truth and what was bullshit was a little harder.

However, his current situation of being pinned to a wall with Daredevil's forearm across his windpipe also seemed to encourage him to cooperate.

Intending to intercept the next robbery, Matt mainly wanted to find out the when and where so that he could crash the party.

"Tell me what your bosses have pl—"

Matt froze in the middle of his sentence as he heard a familiar sound. Past the sound of the man's heartbeat and labored breathing, he recognized a heartbeat he knew, one that he hadn't heard since its last surprise appearance the year before.

_Stick_.

Matt faltered, caught off guard. He turned his head, frantically trying to place where he'd just heard the sound coming from.

His sudden silence confused the man he was interrogating.

"Was…was that the whole question—?" the man asked nervously.

Matt shoved him harder against the wall.

"Shut up," he growled, still listening for another snatch of heartbeat, the click of a cane against pavement. He strained his ears, but didn't pick up on anything.

He shook his head, cursing internally. He didn't need to be losing his focus over a trick of his imagination.

Turning his attention back to the man in front of him, Matt resumed his interrogation, obtaining the information he needed without too much trouble. He called it a night after that, returning to his apartment with the strange incident still on his mind.

* * *

His off mood stuck with him through to his training session with Sarah the next evening.

Matt was still recovering from the wound across his stomach, so they stuck to the punching bag and skipped the sparring. That was probably a good thing in Matt's opinion, as he was still having some difficulty keeping his mind off of the events of the other night, including the unmistakable uptick in Sarah's heartbeat when she'd touched him. It wasn't the first time he'd noticed her reactions to him lately, but this one couldn't be dismissed as easily as the moments during their training sessions could, where the exercise already had her heartbeat elevated and her skin flushed. This had been different, and part of him was itching to pull at that thread.

Of course, he was painfully aware that wasn't an option, but it was harder to remember that when they were sparring and his hands were on her waist or her back was pressed against his chest, with sweat on her skin and blood racing loudly in his ears. So it was lucky for him that he had the excuse of new stitches to avoid that scenario.

It was probably also lucky for Sarah, because she was off that evening, quiet and distracted. Matt didn't ask her about it, figuring she'd come out with it on her own if she felt like it.

Sure enough, midway through their lesson she stepped back from the punching bag to take a few breaths.

"I met McDermott's mother today," she said suddenly.

Whatever Matt had been expecting, that wasn't it. "What?"

"She's—she's been passing out these missing flyers around town," Sarah explained. "She thinks that the police department isn't doing enough to find out what happened to him. Which is fair, I guess, since Jason hasn't been arrested, and neither have I."

Matt's brow furrowed at the inclusion of Jason and Sarah in the same group, as though their crimes had been weighted equally.

"Police in Hell's Kitchen aren't generally known for lending a sympathetic ear to the families of victims. If they haven't made a connection to Orion yet, I doubt they're going to any time soon," he said. It wasn't much of a comfort, but it was something.

"No, that's not the—the issue," Sarah said, running her hands through her hair tiredly before sighing. "I don't know. Nevermind."

She stepped towards the bag and resumed practicing. She still didn't have much power behind her punches—which wasn't surprising given her build—but she was quick, and her form was noticeably better than it had been when they started training.

When they were done, Sarah stretched out on one of the benches tiredly while Matt re-wrapped his hands.

"Hey, are you going to teach me how to use those baton things you're always throwing at people?" she asked curiously.

Matt hesitated. When practicing hand-to-hand in the ring was easy for him to be mindful of how hard he was landing his punches, always pulling them before they could do any actual harm. But it would be harder with the batons to judge how much force he was putting into each hit.

"Maybe," he said noncommittally. "You do like hitting people with things."

"Why you'd pick batons? I mean, out of all the cool stuff you could throw at bad guys."

"It's just what I was trained with. I stopped using them for a long time, but Stick reintroduced me to them last year and they ended up being pretty useful."

He heard her sit up, and could tell she was looking at him more intently.

"Last year? I didn't realize he was still around."

Matt bit back a grimace; he hadn't meant to wander into this conversational territory, and particularly not after his odd encounter the night before.

"He's not," Matt said shortly. "It was a one-time thing. Otherwise he's stayed away the last twenty years."

"…why?" she asked hesitantly, clearly aware she might be treading on dangerous ground.

Matt answered reluctantly. "I made a mistake, and…he left."

"You were just a kid, what kind of mistake could you possibly have made?" she asked slowly.

"Nothing you need to worry about." He hadn't intended to snap the words, but that was how it came out, his frustration with Stick creeping into his tone.

Sarah faltered, seeming surprised by his harsh reaction.

"Okay," she said quietly. "Sorry."

Matt made himself take a deep breath as he unwound the tape from his hands. It wasn't Sarah's fault that the mention of Stick made his stomach clench—and she had no way of knowing the topic had already been stressing him out lately.

He turned to apologize, then frowned when he picked up on movement. She was rubbing her shoulder, her head craned to the other side. Without the sparring portion of their lesson, they'd spent more time than usual on the punching bag; the repetition had probably put a strain on her socket.

"You okay?" he asked, reaching out to touch her shoulder.

She stepped to the side, avoiding his hand as she went to grab her gym bag. "Yeah. I'm fine."

He paused. She didn't sound angry, but she was definitely closed off—probably, he through ruefully, because of how things with Stick looked from her perspective: yet another person in his life that he was adamant about keeping her away from. He knew he should explain that she wasn't the part of the equation that made him nervous. Sarah was exactly what Stick had always told him he couldn't afford to have in his life, and he could only imagine how disastrous it would be if those two worlds collided. But explaining that would mean getting much deeper into the subject of Stick than he wanted to. It wasn't something he liked thinking about, much less talking about. It had been difficult enough to get out the very brief explanation he'd been forced to give Foggy the night he'd discovered his identity.

"You should take a couple of days if you're sore," Matt said, hoping to move past the awkward bump in the conversation. "We could go again on Friday."

"Uh, I…can't. I have a date," she said uncomfortably, tucking her hair behind her ear.

Matt kept his face carefully neutral, hoping his expression didn't betray the way his stomach dropped.

"Oh," he said, the nonchalance in his voice sounding painfully contrived even to him. "With the, uh…with the same guy?"

"Yeah," Sarah said. "I didn't really think there'd be a second date after I ran out on the first one, but…"

She trailed off with a shrug. To be honest, Matt hadn't really thought there'd be a second date either, and a selfish part of him had been relieved.

"That's…great," Matt lied, flashing her what he hoped was a convincing smile. "I'm glad it worked out."

"Yeah, me too," she agreed, though her enthusiasm sounded lacking. He heard her shoulder her gym bag in preparation to leave. "Are you coming?"

"Uh…no," he said, gesturing towards his newly re-wrapped hands. "I'm going to stick around a while longer."

"Okay," she said. Her breathing changed, as though there were something else she wanted to say, but she didn't.

Matt nodded, and she left.

He waited until she was to the end of the block before he began, and if he was hitting the bag a little harder than normal, it was just due to a bad week.

* * *

Sarah's second date with Todd immediately started off on the wrong foot—for Sarah, at least. She'd gone into it with high hopes, doing her hair and makeup early and selecting a dark blue dress that was backless save for a thin t-strap running down her spine.

Todd was as genial as he had been on their first date, but Sarah couldn't keep her mind from wandering to more stressful subjects. It bounced from work to her dad to the email she'd sent Allison—to which Allison had excitedly replied with a list of songs she'd like Sarah to play, inadvertently reminding Sarah that she had little free time to practice, no place to do it, and a years worth of not having touched a piano—while occasionally focusing on the man sitting across the table from her.

The first obstacle of the evening came when the restaurant Todd brought her to ended up being an upscale seafood restaurant, and she didn't have the heart—or was it the spine?—to tell him that she hated seafood. Todd didn't seem bothered when she only ordered a salad, though he did repeatedly insist that she try the dish he'd ordered.

The second problem presented itself when Todd ordered a bottle of expensive wine for them at the beginning of the meal. The server was already about to step away to fetch it when she spoke up quickly.

"Oh, um…I actually don't think I'm going to be drinking tonight," Sarah said carefully. She didn't want to say anything that screamed,  _I maybe have a drinking problem_.

"Are you sure?" Todd pressed. "This wine is really great, I get it every time."

"I'm sure."

"Trust me, whatever you're used to drinking, this will blow it out of the water. It has these great fruit-flavored undertones and this clean finish that blends amazingly," he said.

Sarah glanced at the waiter, trying to discern if any of that description was supposed to mean something to her. Her requirements for wine—for most alcohol, really—fell mostly along the lines of cheap and strong. The waiter just nodded politely in agreement with whatever nonsense Todd had just spouted off.

"It sounds great, but I'm good," Sarah said with a smile. "Thank you, though."

Looking to change the subject, she asked Todd about his family. He went off and they had ended up on the subject of his mother always insisting on being sent copies of every photo shoot he did. Sarah thought it was sweet of his mom, but it wasn't really something she could relate to. She nodded and smiled all the same, hoping at some point there would be some topic they could actually connect on.

"…but you know how mothers are," Todd finished. "Their kids are the center of their world, right?"

Sarah nodded, but she couldn't stop the image of Mrs. McDermott's distraught face from coming to mind.

_"He's my only child. I spoiled him growing up."_

"Right," she said softly.

"What about your mom? Does she live in the city?"

"Uh…no. She lives in Arizona, I think," Sarah said, still thinking about McDermott. She bit her lip, then made a split second decision. "You know, I think…maybe I would like to try that wine you were talking about."

As soon as she said it, she almost took it back.

"Fantastic," he said, brightening immediately. "I'll let the waiter know."

Todd did most of the talking, which was mostly fine with her, as there weren't many parts of her life that she could really share with him. Drinking had always been a way for her to calm her nerves and talk to people more easily, so she had high hopes when she sipped from her first glass and felt that familiar rush of warmth spread through her. She could do this—it was just a date, like she'd gone on in her old life. No big deal.

The wine worked its magic on her nerves, allowing her thoughts to slow down and stay with the conversation instead of wandering off, and she found herself allowing the server to pour a second glass when she was one with her first one. She was finished with her salad much quicker than Todd was done with his food—a Chilean sea bass with champagne truffle sauce, he'd informed her excitedly—leaving her with little to do to do besides listen and sip at her drink.

When the check came, Todd brushed aside her offers to pay her half, insisting on picking up the bill again.

Sarah swayed slightly when she stood, much to her surprise. She'd only had a couple glasses of wine—albeit, heavily poured glasses—which would normally just give her a pleasantly strong buzz. A few glasses of wine was what she'd used to drink  _before_  a date just to kill her nerves. But she hadn't calculated for how much her alcohol tolerance had lowered after several weeks of not drinking, and that combined with the small amount of food she'd eaten had brought her well past the point of tipsy without her really noticing.

"If you're up for it, there's actually a place in your neck of the woods that I've been wanting to check out."

"Oh, I…I think I might have had enough to drink tonight," Sarah told him. Her guilt over breaking her resolution to stay sober was slowly clawing through the warm haze of alcohol she was wrapped in.

"You don't have to drink," he said. "They have bar food."

Tempted by the idea of food that wasn't a salad and encouraged by the wine pumping though her, Sarah agreed, and Todd hailed a cab to take them there.

Sarah had been expecting another upscale establishment—maybe one of those bars that also served scented oxygen or some other trend that Todd was into. So she was surprised when they got out of the cab and he pointed to the bar at the end of the block. There were several less-than-friendly looking patrons lounging on the small patio outside, and none of them were dressed anything like Todd and Sarah were.

"Um…are you sure this is the place you heard about?" she asked him, wondering if maybe he'd gotten the address wrong.

"Yeah, this is it," Todd said. He seemed completely oblivious to the vibes she was picking up on.

"It doesn't really seem like a place you'd go to," she said slowly.

"Well, I've never actually been here before. My friend Chase told me about it, though. He always has his finger on the pulse of things—he called food trucks being a thing back in, like, '02. And he says this bar will be on everyone's list of places to be in a year or two."

"Great, so…let's come back in two years?" she suggested.

"No, come on," he implored her with a teasing grin. "Let's be adventurous."

Sarah stared at him as she slowly realized this was what adventure was to someone like him. Slumming it in a dangerous part of town for a night before returning to whatever expensive, door-manned apartment he lived in. He honestly didn't seem to understand that his clean-shaven, designer look wouldn't go over well in a bar like that—nevermind the reaction her own outfit might get.

"No, thanks," she said firmly.

She was relieved when Todd nodded in understanding, though he still looked disappointed.

"Okay. That's alright. Maybe another time."

"I'm sorry," she said, touching his arm lightly. "Maybe we could go somewhere else?"

"It's no big deal," he said, offering her a reassuring smile. He glanced down at her hand on his arm and stepped a little closer. "You know, it's actually…pretty nice out here, too."

It was obvious that Todd was going to kiss her, and while the idea wasn't particularly off-putting, it also wasn't very exciting. Sarah realized as he pressed his lips against hers that total apathy probably wasn't what she should aim for, and she desperately tried to feel anything else. She felt a flicker of something in her chest, but she was hopeful that it was that spark of exhilaration that came with kissing someone new. Something told her it wasn't, but she ignored it, choosing to return the kiss.

Apparently encouraged by her half-hearted response, Todd moved even closer, resting one hand on the small of her back and sliding the other up to cup the side of her neck as he kissed her more aggressively.

Maybe it was the alcohol, or the fact that Ronan was never far from her thoughts, but as soon as Todd's hand touched her throat, her mind instantly flashed to the last time someone's mouth had been on hers. Instead of kissing Todd, she was back in the lobby of Orion with the taste of Ronan's blood in her mouth and rough hands digging into her already bleeding skin. The expensive cologne that Todd wore just a little too much of was replaced by the smell of stale cigarettes, overwhelming her and sending her heart rate skyrocketing—and not in the way it was supposed to while being kissed.

The small flicker she'd felt earlier flared up in full force, and she finally recognized it not as excitement, but as inexplicably enough as panic, rising quickly and unstoppably in her chest.

As her mind froze, her body acted of its own accord. Almost as though someone else were operating her hands, she slammed them Todd's chest, shoving him away from her. Caught off guard, he stumbled backwards, then let out a hiss of pain as he whacked his head on the corner of the low-hanging metal street sign next to them.

Sarah breathed in shakily, reorienting herself. She wasn't at Orion, she was standing on a street corner, and she no one was trying to hurt her. Her heart stopped racing almost as soon as she put some distance between the two of them, and as her head cleared she felt her face flush with embarrassment.

"What the hell?" Todd exclaimed as he rubbed back of his head. Sarah was relieved to see there was no blood on his hand when he brought it back down again.

"Sorry," she said abruptly. "I'm—I'm so sorry, I didn't…"

"What just happened? Did I misread that or were you kissing me back just now?"

"I—I was. I'm sorry, I wasn't—I just—" She could still feel her face burning as she tried to explain. "Is—is your head okay?"

"Uh,  _no_ ," Todd replied incredulously. "It  _hurts_ , because you shoved me into a street sign like a lunatic."

"I'm so sorry," she repeated. "It's—I wasn't thinking about you—" she tried to explain, but realized even as she said it that it was the wrong thing.

"Well, that makes things better."

"No, that's not what I mean—"

"Listen, I'm not into playing games, so if that's what you're doing—" he began.

"What?" Sarah said. "No, I wasn't trying to play  _games_ , I just…"

He was still looking at her like she was insane. "Just what?"

There was absolutely no chance she was going to give him an honest explanation. It didn't really matter anyway, did it? She'd known from the second he kissed her and she'd felt nothing that there wouldn't be a third date, and this had only solidified it.

"I don't know," she said quietly. "I…think we were just m-moving faster…than I wanted to."

Todd cast his eyes up to the sky and sighed deeply. "Okay. Sure. Whatever. Just don't do…whatever girls do where they make up some crazy story in their head, okay? You were definitely kissing me back."

Sarah bristled at the implication. "You don't have to be such an asshole about it."

" _I'm_  being an asshole? That's really rich. You know, Lauren and Greg said you were this cool girl that I could have fun with. But you run out on our first date with some ridiculous explanation, and now you give me all of these signals to kiss you and then freak out on me and call me names," Todd said, laughing incredulously. "Listen, you're a cute girl, and I thought we could have a good time together, but…I'm not looking for drama right now. Whatever kind of craziness you have…I'm not interested."

Sarah pressed her lips together, taking a deep breath before answering.

"I'm not crazy," she said softly.

"Yeah, okay," Todd said, holding his hands up. "Just…have a good night."

Then he walked away. A dozen angry retorts danced on the tip of her tongue, but shouting after him on a public street wasn't going to make her feel any better. Instead she just swore under her breath as she watched him hail a cab and disappear.

Left alone, she took stock of her situation: she didn't have money to spare on a cab, the subway was almost as far of a walk as her apartment was, and she was wearing very uncomfortable heels. To make matters worse, the ground was beginning to look like it was spinning slightly.

Casting around for a safe place to sit, she spotted a low wall set back against a bank. It looked clean, and it was shadowy enough that she wouldn't draw attention. She made her way over to it unsteadily, bringing out her phone as she sat down with little grace.

She dialed Matt's burner phone, but it just rang until his nondescript automated voicemail came on. Sarah hung up before the beep, not intending to leave another inebriated message on his phone. She hoped he was just busy running around rooftops and not hurt somewhere.

Wanting to give herself just a few more minutes to let the spinning sensation pass, Sarah remained on the steps. She tiredly reached up to slip the bobby pins out of her hair one by one, letting it tumble down around her shoulders before lowering her head into her hands. She swallowed hard, hoping to fend off the stinging sensation in her eyes, but it was too late; she was already crying.

This wasn't her. She wasn't sixteen anymore; didn't cry over bad dates. And there was no point in pretending like she had even liked Todd, as hard as she had tried to. But she couldn't get around the fact that she so spectacularly messed up what should have been a fun, simple night. Normal things like this were supposed to be the easiest part of leaving Orion: dating again, helping her dad with his health, getting back into playing piano. And now none of those things were going the way she had thought. The help that her dad needed was buried under mountains of paperwork and red tape; she'd jumped the gun on returning to music with no way to prepare for it; and now she'd just chased away what she was sure was the most normal date she'd manage to find. And over what? Something that had  _almost_  happened to her, with a completely different person, months ago? Someone who was now dead and shouldn't justifiably still be such a looming presence in her life?

She couldn't help but think that this was some sort of twisted karma. This was what she got for not feeling guilty over Ronan's death: he would never, ever leave her. The feel of his hands would constantly be on her skin, his shadow would loom over every relationship she had from now on.

The sound of her phone ringing snapped her out of her thoughts. She knew who it was even before she read the screen.

"Matt. Hi."

"Hey. What's wrong?" he said, picking up immediately on the unevenness in her voice. "Are you okay?"

"No, no, I'm fine. I was just, um…" Sarah pressed her lips into a hard line, casting her eyes upwards. This was pathetic. Was she really going to make him deal with her while she was drunk and crying?

"Sarah?" Matt prompted her, the concern in his voice stronger now.

"I was wondering if…you'd please come walk me home," she said softly. She really hoped he wouldn't ask her any questions, because she didn't feel like explaining things over the phone.

"Where are you?"

"Um…near the corner of 39th and 10th."

There was a short pause after she named the cross streets.

"Okay. I'll be right there."

Sarah closed her eyes as the phone line dead, for once thankful for the taciturn nature of Matt's alter ego. No questions asked beyond the essentials. Knowing that she wouldn't have to go home alone helped to ease the overwhelming hopelessness that had washed over her.

A short while later, she heard the sound of heavy boots hitting the ground behind her and jumped slightly. She should have expected that Matt would drop in from the overhang sheltering the steps; it's not like he could just waltz down the middle of the street to come get her. She turned to look up at him as he drew closer.

"Hi," she greeted him quietly. "I, um…I just need a minute to—to be less…dizzy before we go." She pressed the palms of her hands to her eyes for a moment. Maybe she should have had more to eat.

Matt crouched down in front of where she was sitting on the wall so that he was eye level with her. His Daredevil mask was obscuring the top half of his face, but she knew even without being able to see it that his brow was furrowed in concern. He gently pushed her hair back from where it was hanging in front of her face.

"You've…been drinking."

It wasn't a question, but Sarah nodded yes anyway.

"Where's Todd?"

"He left."

Matt cocked his head in disbelief. "He left you  _here_? By yourself?"

Sarah nodded again, then stopped. Nodding so much was making her more dizzy, so that it looked like there were two Matts in front of her with their mouths set into hard, unhappy lines.

"Yeah, that's…that's done," she said, her words slurring a little at the end. "I screwed that up."

"What hap—"

"Matt, if you don't ask me any questions until I get home and have some water, I swear I will answer whatever you want me to," she said.

"Okay," he said quietly. "I'll be taking you up on that."

After another minute of regaining her equilibrium, Sarah figured she was steady enough for the walk home.

"You ready?" Matt asked, holding his hand out for her.

"Yeah."

When she'd called the vigilante to come help her, she hadn't thought about the fact that the alcohol pumping through her system would make it that much harder to ignore the thoughts she'd been having about him lately. But that quickly became apparent when Matt stood, pulling her to her feet along with him. His other hand was already at her waist, anticipating the slight sway in her movements as she stood up. She couldn't help but notice that even with his gloves on she could feel the warmth of his hand through the thin fabric of her dress, and she wasn't sure whether she was relieved or disappointed when he let go after she found her footing.

"Are you okay to walk all the way?"

"Yes," she said adamantly. "I'm good. Really. It's just the heels."

They didn't talk as they made the walk back to her apartment. Matt kept close to her, occasionally putting out a hand to steady her.

The first thing Sarah did upon entering her apartment was to clumsily kick off her heels, wincing at the blisters she could already feel forming as she padded over to the fire escape window to let Matt in. She'd nearly forgotten that he was in his Daredevil costume until he'd reminded her that he wouldn't be able to go in through the front door with her.

She closed her eyes for a second, leaning back against the windowsill and breathing in deep, wishing she hadn't done this to herself tonight.

"Here," Matt said quietly, and she opened her eyes to see him holding out a glass of water. She hadn't even heard him moving around.

"Thank you," she said, gratefully accepting the glass and taking a long drink from it. She could only hope it was help mitigate the unavoidable hangover she would have tomorrow. Wine always gave her the worst hangovers.

Sarah set the glass down carefully, then slipped her earrings off, setting them on the table as well before reaching behind her to undo her necklace. She fumbled with the clasp on the chain, but it had gotten tangled in the halter strap of her dress. With a sigh, she looked over her shoulder at Matt hopefully.

"Could you…?"

Matt carefully swept her hair to the side and over her shoulder. Sarah was very aware of how close he was, just inches away from the exposed skin of her back where her dress dipped low. She closed her eyes as she felt the warmth of his hands working to detangle the delicate chain.

"Sorry," she muttered. "I don't even know how it got like this."

Matt laughed, and she felt his breath ghost across the back of her neck. She hoped he didn't notice the shiver it sent through her, but the way his fingers paused for a second made her suspect that he did.

A minute later the necklace was untangled. Matt held it out for her and she accepted it as she turned back around to face him.

"Thanks," she said quietly. The space between them was small enough that she had to tilt her head back a fraction to look up at him. For a beat neither of them moved.

Matt cleared his throat and took a deliberate step back, putting some more distance between the two of them.

"You should, uh…drink some more water," he said, his voice tight. "Sober up."

"Right," she agreed quickly. Then she gestured at her outfit. "Um…I'm going to go change out of this first."

She stole a look back at him just before the doorway to her room. He had one hand on his hip as he ran the other through his hair, shaking his head at himself.

Her bedroom was a disaster zone of clothing due to a mix of date preparation and laundry laziness. She unzipped her dress and let it slide to the floor, then dug through her clothing till she found a tank top and a pair of pajama shorts to change into. She looked for a sweatshirt in vain, already knowing that they were all dirty or buried under a mountain of dresses and skirts, until one in particular caught her eye. It was much too large and had  _Columbia_ stitched across the front.

She traced her fingers over the embroidered letters, then impulsively grabbed the sweatshirt out of her drawer and slipped it on.

_Maybe he won't notice_ , she thought, kicking some clothing aside as she opened the door to her bedroom.

Matt noticed immediately, his eyebrows going up as soon as she came near him. He reached out to catch the edge of one of the sleeves in his fingers.

"I have a distant memory of this belonging to someone else."

"Mmm, no, I don't think so," she said with a guilty laugh, sidestepping him and heading into the kitchen. "Obviously I would have given it back by now if it wasn't mine."

"What are you doing?"

"I'm hungry," she said, glancing over her shoulder at him as he trailed her into the room.

"Didn't you just come from a dinner date?"

"I didn't eat anything," Sarah said. "He took me to this fancy seafood place, and I don't like seafood."

"No?"

"No," Sarah said, wrinkling her nose as she dug through the contents of her fridge. Why did it seem like she had nothing but condiments in here? "It's all just…ugh, trash. Expensive ocean trash."

"So what are you making?"

She surveyed what little she had in her fridge.

"Uh…grilled cheese," she decided, more out of a lack of other options than anything else.

As she turned on the stove top, Matt leaned back against the counter next to her. He didn't say anything while she messed with the pan and the ingredients, but she could feel it coming. She could sense a Matt Murdock interrogation a mile away by now.

"Are you going to tell me what happened tonight?" he asked quietly.

Sarah bit her lip. Now that she was home and a little less drunk, she felt like she'd been embarrassingly dramatic earlier, and she didn't want Matt to think things had gone worse than they had.

"It was nothing, really," she said. "Just…run-of-the-mill bad date stuff."

Matt tilted his head, unseeing eyes flicking over her in that way that made her feel like she was being x-rayed.

"Stop that," she told him, pointing her spatula at him in a vaguely threatening manner.  
"What?" he asked, leaning back to avoid the utensil.

"Listening to my heartbeat. I know that's what you're doing, and that's my own—you know…cardiovascular…business."

"I don't have to bother with your heartbeat. You really think I couldn't tell you'd been crying when I got there? And I've seen you deal with a  _lot_ of shitty situations without crying, so I don't think that a boring date is what does the trick. What did he do?"

Sarah chewed her lip, focusing on the stove instead of him. "He didn't do anything. It was me."

"I find that hard to believe."

Sarah didn't even know where to begin trying to explain. She wasn't even really sure what had happened herself, except that Todd had set off some alarm in her head for no reason, made her lose her sense of where she was for a few seconds. But she didn't particularly want to go into detail about Todd kissing her, and she  _really_  didn't want to talk about flashing back to her encounter with Ronan, but it was unavoidable if she was going to explain the reaction she'd had.

"It turns out that killing Ronan doesn't magically make him go away," she said, barely audibly. Realization slowly dawn on Matt's face, his jaw tightening. "I just…I got mixed up. Only for a few seconds. About who I was with." She struggled with out to word it without sounding crazy, but she wasn't sure if she was making any sense or if it was all just coming out as drunken fragments. "Like it said, it…it was me."

"That's not your fault."

"No, it kind of is," she said.

"How do you figure?"

She thought about telling him her theory: That maybe this was her punishment for not feeling guiltier about Ronan's death, and for not feeling guilty about McDermott until one of his family members was right in front of her. She'd killed Ronan, and now was just going to stick with her forever.

"I don't know," she lied. "I guess because I'd been drinking. Again. And I wasn't very, um…honest with Todd. About what I was comfortable with."

"I take it he didn't react well."

Sarah gave a rueful laugh. "No. I wasn't about to tell him that I thought he was my dead stalker. I didn't really give him any explanation at all, so…he just thinks I'm a crazy bitch," she said bitterly.

Matt was quiet for a moment.

"Did he call you that?"

The deadly calm in his voice caught her attention, and she flicked her gaze over towards him. His expression was misleadingly calm, save for the current of agitation running from the tick in his jaw down to his fingers, which drummed slowly against the counter top.

"No," she said quickly. It was half-true. He hadn't called her a bitch, although she almost would have preferred that to being called crazy.

Matt nodded slowly, but didn't look convinced.

"Why?" she asked, narrowing her eyes at him suspiciously.

"No reason."

"Matt," she said warningly. "He was a jerk, but he doesn't deserve to get…Daredeviled for making me cry."

"You're right," Matt agreed, and for a moment she was relieved. "But…leaving you drunk and alone on a dark street corner in a dangerous part of town late at night?" He shrugged. "Maybe warrants a chat."

"I don't think it does." She was fairly certain he wasn't actually intending to do anything to Todd, but she could never be entirely sure with him.

"Do you know what kind of area he brought you to? You know better than anyone what kind of people you could have run into at night in Hell's Kitchen, especially in that part of town."

"He probably thought I would just get a cab," she said weakly. She didn't know why she was defending Todd's actions. Maybe it was because he'd accused her of playing the victim, and she wanted to prove that she wasn't.

"Mhm."

"Hey." Sarah reached up and gently ran her fingers from his temple down his jaw. She knew she probably shouldn't; but she was drunk and didn't particularly care. "I appreciate the…very considerate offer of violence. But we went over this. You can't possibly punch every problem I have."

Matt's expression remained dark for another moment before he sighed begrudgingly. The hard set of his jaw relaxed slightly as he leaned into her touch.

"I can try," he said seriously, but the tight anger that had been in his voice a moment ago had faded. Then he frowned, tilting his head. "I think your sandwich is burning."

Sarah snapped her attention back to the stove.

"Damn it," she muttered, quickly moving the sandwich off the hot pan and onto a plate. Shaking her head at her dismal drunk-cooking skills, she tossed another piece of bread in the pan.

A few minutes later she was done. She handed him the better of the two sandwiches. He took it, then made a face, nodding towards the plate she was holding.

"I'll take the burnt one off your hands," he offered.

"Mm-mm," she said, leaning back and holding the plate out of his reach. "I'm not making the guy with super taste buds eat burnt food. That's just mean."

"Suit yourself."

Sarah grabbed her plate and water glass and slowly lowered herself to the ground, sitting with her back against the cabinets and her legs stretched out in front of her.

"You do have a kitchen table," Matt noted from above her.

"Too far away," she said, waving her hand dismissively.

With a sigh, Matt sat down next to her, and she turned to look at him.

"Thanks for coming to get me," she said quietly. "I owe you one for having to deal with drunk me again."

"As long as you're not forcing me to drink cheap vodka again, I can handle it," he said, raising his eyebrows pointedly with a small grin before his expression grew serious again. "I'm sorry your night went so badly."

"It got better. This…is better," she said carefully.

He tilted his head, throwing a doubtful look in her general direction.

"Really?" he said dryly. "Grilled cheese on your kitchen floor instead of lobster at a nice restaurant?"

"Well, yeah," she acknowledge with a laugh. "But I meant all of it. The food. The company," she said, drawing a small grin that played across Matt's lips. "The clothing is definitely more comfortable."

His grin curled into something resembling more of a smirk.

"I don't know, I kind of liked your other outfit," he said innocently.

Sarah bit her lip, shaking her head. Surely, she thought,  _surely_ , he just said these things sometimes to enjoy hearing her reaction.

"You're just saying that because you want your sweatshirt back," she retorted.

Matt laughed, but shook his head. "It's yours."

Movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention, and Sarah turned her head to see a tiny pair of beady eyes watching curiously from under the fridge. She hadn't seen the tiny mouse in a while, and she was glad he was still around.

Sarah discreetly tore of a tiny piece and tossed it in the mouse's direction, then pressed her fingers to her lips. Despite what she thought was impressive sneakiness, Matt raised an eyebrow at her, nodding in the small rodent's direction.

"Are you really sharing your sandwich with a mouse?"

"He's hungry," she told him. "I think he's been drinking."

Matt snorted but didn't protest any more.

She let her thoughts wander as she idly watched the mouse creep towards the crust. She couldn't stop thinking about how embarrassed she had been tonight, and it was making her second guess some of the decisions she'd made lately.

"I think…maybe I jumped in too quickly with all of this normal life stuff," she said, breaking the silence. "I didn't even really like Todd, I just…wanted to know I could do something as simple as go out on a date. And it turns out I can't. And I—I said I'd do this dumb fundraiser without really thinking through the million ways I could mess that up, too—"

"You agreed to play at that?" Matt interrupted her. "Your friend's party?"

"I did," she said reluctantly. Any excitement she'd had about the prospect had been swallowed up by anxiety.

"That's fantastic," he said. His genuine enthusiasm made her smile weakly despite herself. "…isn't it?"

"I thought so, but I…I think I might see if it's not too late to back out," she decided, picking at the sandwich on her plate. "I didn't even think about the fact that there were be specific songs she'll want me to play, and that I don't even have anywhere to practice. Everywhere I used to go is either booked or too expensive for me now. And—and I still don't even know how to pronounce this stupid disease they're raising money for—I don't even know what it  _is_ , really. I think it, like, makes you bite your fingers off or something, I don't know—"

"I don't think they'll quiz you on it," Matt said, gently cutting off the beginning of a ramble. "Don't cancel."

Sarah eyed him for a moment before making a noncommittal noise and looking back down at her food.

Matt reached over, tugging lightly at one of the drawstrings on the sweatshirt she was wearing. "Do you remember the night I lent you this?"

Sarah gave him an incredulous look, a laugh bursting from lips.

"Do  _you?_ " she asked. "I wasn't the one who had a zillion pounds of scaffolding land on my head."

"Admittedly parts of it are still blurry," he said with a chuckle, before sobering up again. "But…I do remember how much you really didn't want to be there."

Sarah tilted her head, trying to figure out where he was going with this.

"You didn't want me there, either," she pointed out, recalling the dark bruise he'd left on her back when he'd pinned her to the doorway. So different from the way Matt always touched her now, as though trying to erase more rough hands he had put on her.

"Definitely not. You were probably the last person I wanted in my apartment when I woke up," he agreed bluntly. Sarah gave him a vaguely offended look on behalf of her past self. "But  _you_ …you wanted to leave because you were afraid. I could hear your heartbeat echoing all around my apartment it was so fast. Like you'd rather have been anywhere but there."

"Why are we talking about this?" she asked softly.

"Because you stayed and helped me anyway. And I thought that was…impressive."

"No, see, this is where me not being the concussed one that night wins out, memory-wise," she said with a firm shake of her head. "You were  _not_  impressed. You were mostly just annoyed that Foggy and I pushed you around in a dirty shopping cart."

"I forgot you did that," Matt said with a brief frown. Sarah shrugged. "That aside, the point was…I've never known you to not do something just because you were afraid. Sometimes to the point of being slightly infuriating. Like insisting on staying in your apartment despite  _several_  offers to stay somewhere safer," he said pointedly. "And I have no doubt that you'll find a way to get past this, too."

Sarah leaned her head back against the cabinet, smiling as she studied him.

"You've got a pretty good memory for a guy who's always getting kicked in the head."

"Some things are a little fuzzy," he acknowledged. Then, after a pause, he added, "You know what I  _do_  remember from that night?"

"What?"

"Asking you what you had me saved as in your phone," he said pointedly.

Sarah blinked, then looked over at him.

"Did—did you ask about that?" she asked innocently.

"I did," he confirmed. "And I remember you made some joke instead of answering, but I let it slide because I thought there was no way you'd have me saved as something ridiculously obvious. Like, say…a tiny cartoon devil. "

"Lauren," she grumbled.

"Have you really had me saved as that this whole time?"

"Um…" Sarah began, giving a guilty shrug. Upon seeing the scowl on Matt's face, she changed tactics. "I would like to remind you that I have been crying, so…it would be mean of you to yell at me right now."

"Nice try." He reached over and slipped her phone out of the front pocket of her sweatshirt, then held it out for her to take. "Change it," he told her firmly.

"Fine," she mumbled, taking the phone and tapping at the screen.

" _Not_  to Leonard," he added.

Sarah's fingers paused, then with a sigh she hit the backspace button a few times.

"You take the fun out of everything."

Matt smirked, opening his mouth to reply until something outside caught his attention and he paused. He tilted his head fractionally, like a satellite dish picking up a signal. Sarah watched him curiously, wondering what he was hearing. After a few seconds, he turned back to her.

"I gotta go," he said.

Sarah nodded. "Stay safe."

Matt hesitated when he got to the window.

"Things will be alright," he said. "Okay? Just…give it some time."

Despite everything indicating otherwise, she decided to believe him, at least for right now.

* * *

Sarah hadn't heard much from Matt over the weekend, save for a quick text checking on her the morning after her date. But beyond that it had largely been radio silence, and while she told herself it was just because he was busy leading two full time lives there was a small part of her that still worried he was avoiding her for whatever reason. And that reason was probably that he could pick up on her embarrassingly obvious reactions to him lately, and he was staying far away from that potential disaster. Which is really what she should do as well, if she was smart.

He didn't contact her again until Tuesday evening, when she was on her way to the subway after work. Her day had been long and stressful, and she'd just been thinking about slipping into a pair of sweatpants and taking a nap on her couch when her phone rang.

"Hi," she answered.

"Hey. Are you free to meet up right now?" he asked.

He didn't sound like he was in pain, but her mind automatically went to various unpleasant scenarios for why he would need to see her right then.

"Are you hurt?" she asked concernedly.

"No, no. I just want to show you something."

Sarah tilted her head, switching her phone from one ear to the other. "Show me what?"

"I guess you'll have to come with me and find out," he said lightly.

"I…" Sarah hesitated, glancing across the street at the subway stop that would take her home, where she had leftover Thai food and a comfortable change of clothes waiting for her. But in the end, her curiosity over what Matt wanted to show her won out. "Okay, sure. Where should I meet you?"  
Ten minutes later, she waited at the intersection he'd mentioned, which was on the way to whatever he wanted to show her. She only had to wait a few minutes before he showed up.

"It's just a few blocks this way," he said, nodding down the street.

As they walked down the sidewalk, most people moved out of the way when they spotted Matt's cane. But more than a few didn't, and if he didn't have his enhanced senses allowing him to lean just out of the way each time, she suspected he would get slammed into a lot.

"So…are you going to tell me what it is we're going to see now?" she asked after they'd been walking for a minute.

Matt looked thoughtful. "No."

She squinted at him. "Well, can you give me a hint?"

"No."

"Is it bigger than a breadbox?"

"Did I at any point tell you that that I'd be playing twenty questions with you?" he shot back, unimpressed with her investigative attempts.

She let out a frustrated groan, to which he only chuckled.

"Don't set your expectations too high. It's not anything amazing."

"Too late. My expectations are already high," she informed him.

"Well, I hope you aren't disappointed, then."

A few blocks later, they turned a corner and came to a stop. Sarah looked up at the building in front of them, bringing her hand up to her eyes to shield them from the sun. She was met with the sight of a large church—old-fashioned looking with stained-glass windows and tall doors.

She'd known, of course, that Matt was religious. Foggy had mentioned Matt's Catholic guilt more than once, and she'd seen the Bible on his nightstand. She was also almost certain that she'd heard snatches of him saying a prayer under his breath the night Ronan had held a knife to her throat, but it had been difficult to tell for sure, and it had never felt appropriate to ask him.

"It's…a church."

"It is," he confirmed.

"Is—is this the surprise?" she asked uncertainly. "Converting to Catholicism?"

She was mostly joking, but she was still relieved when Matt snorted at the question.

"I think the Church does alright without sending the blind out to lure people in," he said dryly. "That's not why we're here."

"What are we doing here, then?" she asked, trailing after him as he tapped his cane towards the front doors.

"Come on," he said instead of answering, holding the door open for her and nodding towards it.

She hesitated just short of stepping through the doorway, craning her neck so that she could peer inside at how many people were around; she always felt like she was intruding when she entered a place where people were praying. But the church appeared empty.

Matt stepped into the doorway behind her, and she felt a hand on the small of her back as he gently prompted her forward. "If I haven't burst into flames at the threshold, you definitely won't."

Sarah sent him a dirty look over her shoulder but allowed him to guide her into the church, especially aware of his hand on her lower back now that she felt like grand deities were watching her thoughts. Luckily, she was distracted from that by the sight of the room they were in. It wasn't a giant church, and the moderate size made it feel more welcoming. The high-vaulted ceiling above them curved down to meet the colorful stained glass windows that punctuated the walls, and dark wooden pews lined the aisles.

There was a short fountain at the back of the church. When they passed by it Matt dipped his fingertips into the shallow well of water and genuflected, briefly murmuring something under his breath as he bowed his head. Sarah watched, simultaneously fascinated and feeling as though she was intruding on a private moment.

"Why isn't anyone here?" she asked him in a hushed voice.

"Mass doesn't start for another two hours or so."

"Oh," she said, pausing and looking around the church again. Her curiosity was killing her, and she couldn't help asking again. "So…now do I get to find out why we're here?"

"Has anyone ever told you that patience isn't your strong point?" he retorted. Sarah replied with a low noise of offense, and Matt laughed. "This way."

He led her over to a wooden door near the front of the church, which she assumed led to the rectory and church offices.

"Are we allowed back here?" she whispered.

"We're not breaking and entering a church," he said, seeming amused by her discomfort. "I got permission."

Sarah peered into the rooms they passed by: a small, messy office; a colorful room that she assumed was for some sort of Bible study; a meeting room that was doubling as a large storage area.

They came to a stop in front of an open door near the end of the hall, and he motioned for her to go inside.

"Ridiculous," she murmured to herself, laughing softly at the secrecy of the situation as she stepped inside.

She took in a surprised breath when she stepped inside. It was small and dusty, with bookshelves lining two of the walls on both sides, half full of books and half full of various knick knacks. A large window on one side of the room allowed sunlight to stream inside, landing directly on the object in the middle of the room: an upright piano. It had dark cherry wood and simple carvings along the top, with low, matching bench tucked underneath.

Matt's shoulder brushed against her own as he stepped into the room beside her. When Sarah managed to tear her eyes away from the piano to give him a look of disbelief.

"I know you have a lot of things going on that I can't really you help with. But…I figured maybe I could help with this," he said quietly. The teasing tone he'd held during the trip there was gone now, replaced by something more serious. He seemed almost hesitant now that they had reached the big reveal. "It's free, and quiet. They only use it for practice on Wednesday nights, so no one will bother you the rest of the week."

Sarah didn't know what to say, still so surprised by this turn of events. Her entire week had been one awful hit after another, leaving her feeling like she couldn't breathe sometimes—and now here was this one, small thing that was  _perfect._

Matt shifted next to her, fingering the leather loop at the top of his cane. Her silence seemed to make him doubtful.

"I know it's not an ideal practice space," he added uncertainly. "It's small, and…in a church. And probably not a state-of-the-art piano."

"No, it's…perfect," she whispered.

She gingerly took a seat on the bench to inspect the piano. It was older looking, but solid and well-built. There were no ornate decorations on it, but the keys were still smooth and unchipped as she lightly ran her finger tips over them without pressing down.

"This is perfect," she said softly. "Seriously, Matt. Thank you."

"It was no problem."

She squinted over at him suspiciously. "What kind of fast-talking lawyer tricks did you have to do to convince your priest to let some strange girl practice in here?"

"It didn't take much convincing at all. He's a good man. He likes to help people. And once I promised him that your playing wouldn't make his ears bleed, he was in."

"You don't know that," she said laughingly. "You've never even heard me play. I could be awful for all you know."

From the smirk that spread across his face, it appeared that he had been waiting for her to say something along those lines.

"That's a good point," he agreed, placing his hands on the windowsill and swiftly lifting himself up so that he was sitting on the deep ledge. He leaned forward, clasping his hands between his knees. "But conveniently, we're in a room with a piano, and I happen to have some free time to listen."

She supposed she had walked right into that trap.

"You—you want me to play right now?" she clarified.

"Kind of what I'm hoping for."

"Oh," she said, caught off guard by the request. "Um…"

"You  _did_  say the other night that you owe me," he pointed out.

She narrowed her eyes at him. He had her there.

"I didn't think you'd actually cash in on it," she muttered.

"Well, then you think I'm a much better person than I am."

As she gazed at the piano in front of her, a nervous feeling fluttered in her stomach. Part of it was just from the suddenness of being asked to play after so long, but she knew part of it had something to do with her audience. Being around him pretty much always made her feel exposed, and playing the piano in front of him seemed like it would only multiply that.

Then she looked back over at Matt on the windowsill, framed just as she was used to always seeing him in her much smaller apartment window. Except this time there was bright sunlight streaming through the glass around him, illuminating the dust particles in the air as it flooded the small room. She studied him for a moment, memorizing that picture, because how often did she get to see him surrounded by sunlight instead of shadows?

He was still waiting patiently for her to answer. She knew that bringing her here—to his church, this central part of his religion and so many of the things that drove him—wasn't a small thing for him. Matt so carefully guarded every single part of his life, This was a deliberate step, letting her see this part of his life was and there was no way she could waste that.

"Alright," she agreed, and Matt's smile widened. "What do you want to hear?"

"I…don't know much about piano," he admitted with a self-conscious shrug. "Play me something you like."

She looked down at her hands, framed against a backdrop they hadn't touched in a long time, and frowned at how different they looked now. Thin scars that she could only assume were going to be permanent still crisscrossed her skin and her knuckles were lightly bruised from practicing on the punching bag. Matt swore that they would stop bruising so easily as she practiced more, but she wasn't so sure. She rolled her wrist experimentally, trying to ascertain if it was moving stiffer than it used to before she sprained it, or if she was just imagining things. Even her nails were a mess from where she was constantly chipping away the polish, a nervous habit she'd picked up at some point in the last year.

Sarah could feel herself sinking into her head, becoming overwhelmed by tiny things that rationally she knew didn't matter. It was just a piano; there was no reason to be so nervous about returning to it.

She looked up at Matt. There was a small crease between his brows, and she suspected he was picking up on the range of emotions that must be radiating off her.

"Actually, could you…sit over here, instead?" she asked hesitantly.

He tilted his head at her questioningly, but she didn't have any explanation that she particularly wanted to say out loud, so she didn't offer one. She slid over a few inches to make space for him on the small bench.

Despite the lack of explanation, Matt acquiesced anyway, gracefully hopping down from the window ledge and taking a seat on the bench next to her. It wasn't a two-person bench, She closed her eyes for a few seconds, focusing on the warmth at her side and the light, clean scent he always had, so different from the heavy cologne that had overwhelmed her with Todd. His presence next to her had its usual effect, somehow waking her up and calming her down at the same time; which was exactly what she had been hoping for. The distraction factor that it brought was worth the calm that slowly swept through her.

There was a hairtie around her wrist, which she slipped off and used to tie her hair into a loose, low ponytail over her shoulder. The summer humidity had already started creeping into the city, and it made the ends of her hair curl slightly, getting in her eyes more than usual. She pushed away the few strands that still fell in her face.

She stole a sideways glance at Matt.

"I don't sing," she warned him.

"Neither do I."

"Okay," she said softly. She took a deep breath, in and out, before placing her fingers on the keys.

She looked down at her fingers as she played the first few opening notes of the song, not so much out of any need to see the keys but rather as a way to avoid looking in Matt's direction. Out of all the audiences she had played for—from tiny audition rooms with hypercritical admissions judges to crowds of people who had paid money to be there—this was by far the most vulnerable she'd ever felt behind a piano.

As she played, the tightness in her chest slowly unwound. This was something she could do well, one piece of her that was still here. It wasn't one hundred percent the same; she had to focus a little more than she had when she was playing every day, and her fingers were stiffer than they used to be. But the feeling that came with playing was still the same, and with that realization came a relief so strong it almost made her feel light-headed.

She stole a sideways glance at Matt, and immediately a tiny bit of the nervousness returned when she saw how intently he was listening. He had his head cocked sideways in the same way he did when he was hearing something far away, and his sightless gaze was fixed somewhere just between her and the piano. A faint, crooked smile played across his face, though his eyes were serious as he concentrated on her playing. She wondered what it was like for him to listen to music with his senses—could he hear every tiny detail in each note?

She turned her attention back to the keys before he could notice her studying him, and didn't look back over until she was playing the last few notes. He had serious look on his face as she waited to hear what he had to say.

"I'm…concerned I might have undersold you when I told Father Lantom you were good."

Sarah laughed, suddenly very relieved that Matt had been the first person to hear her play again, because if that sentiment had come from anyone else's mouth she might not have believed them.

"I thought I heard music down here," came a voice from behind them.

Sarah jumped slightly, and she could have sworn Matt did as well, which was strange. People couldn't really sneak up on Matt, could they? He almost always sensed them coming. She saw a flash of what almost looked like guilt on his face as he quickly leaned away from her, but then it was gone.

Looking behind her, she saw the voice that had spoken belonged to a man standing in the doorway. His black outfit and clerical collar gave him away as a priest, and he was mostly bald, with piercing blue eyes that would have seemed intimidating if not paired with a calm, welcoming look.

Matt stood up from the piano bench, and Sarah followed suit.

"Sarah, this is Father Lantom, the priest here. Father…" Matt hesitated, as though even to the last moment he was debating doing this. "…this is Sarah."

Father Lantom's gaze settled on her.

"Sarah," he said, nodding his head in recognition. He looked at her intently, curiosity on his features. "I'm glad to get to meet you. I've heard a lot about you."

It was a fairly innocuous thing to say upon first meeting someone, but the serious weight of his tone when he said it made her think it was something more. Sarah faltered, letting her gaze flick questioningly over to Matt, but she couldn't discern from his expression if that meant what she thought it did. She turned her attention back to the priest in front of her.

"It's nice to meet you," she said, holding her hand out. "Um, your church is beautiful."

"I think so, too. Unfortunately it doesn't have central air, so…enjoy the nice temperatures while you can."

Sarah nodded, pushing her hair behind her ear. She'd always felt a little nervous around religious figures, as though they could read her mind. "Thank you for letting me use your music room."

"It's no problem. Honestly, the piano hardly gets any use. We usually prefer the big church organ—it adds a certain sense of drama that we religious types don't usually get to enjoy," he said lightly.

The mention of religious types reminded her of an issue she felt she needed to bring up if she was going to be using his church to practice.

"I'm not, uh, especially…Catholic," she explained haltingly, looking back and forth between the two men. "I don't know if that's…a problem."

Father Lantom seemed amused by her wording. "'Not especially' meaning…just kind of Catholic? Because we call those Episcopalians."

It took her a second to realize he was joking—she wasn't aware that priests were generally funny—and once she did she laughed.

"Meaning…not at all. I mean, I'm not like, super  _un_ religious, I just—I don't really do a lot of the…church," she explained lamely.

Matt ducked his head in an attempt to conceal his silent laughter, and Sarah narrowed her eyes at him.

"Matthew didn't give me the impression that you were religious when we spoke. It's not an issue," Lantom assured her. "I did my days as a missionary when I was younger, spreading the word. Now I find that it's difficult enough to take care of the ones who are already here. Did you know there are more than three thousand Catholics in the world for every one priest?"

"That's a lot of Catholics."

"And not a lot of priests. It's not the life for everyone, I suppose," Father Lantom said. He gestured down the hallway in the opposite direction of the way they'd come. "There's a side door down the hall. It's open whenever the church is, so feel free to come and go."

"Thank you," she said again.

"Well, I just stopped by to introduce myself, but I have to get back to it," he said. "It was nice to meet you, Sarah."

"You too."

Lantom turned his attention towards Matt.

"I'll see you soon, Matthew. Perhaps actually  _in_  Mass rather than several hours afterwards," he said pointedly.

Matt cleared his throat, and Sarah bit back a grin at the mildly chastised expression on his face. "Right. Have a good day, Father."

Sarah glanced back at the office door as they walked down the hallway.

"I think you just got in trouble," she whispered.

Matt groaned. "I'm re-thinking bringing you here."

As they stepped outside, a warm breeze greeted them at the door. The weather was surprisingly nice, having not yet turned to the sweltering, garbage-scented oven New York City turned into in the summertime.

Matt tilted his head towards her.

"You in a hurry?"

Sarah's mind flashed to the couch she had so been looking forward to curling up on and blocking out the long day she'd had. Suddenly it didn't seem as appealing as it had.

"No," she said, her lips curving upwards. "I can stay a while."

They didn't end up going far, choosing to settle on some steps in front of a closed office down the block, with the church still in view. Matt sat with his back against the low stone wall that framed the steps, his long legs stretched out in front of him. Sarah was perched cross-legged a step above him, turned sideways so she was facing him. She traced the patterns on the brick steps as they sat together, sometimes talking and other times not.

"So, why  _don't_  you go to Mass?" she asked curiously.

Matt heaved a sigh, leaning his head back against the wall behind him.

"I usually work during the afternoon services, and the morning ones are just so…early," he said. His inflection near the end of his explanation was so unhappy—nearly a whine—that Sarah couldn't stop herself from laughing loudly, startling a middle aged pedestrian who was passing by.

"That cannot possibly be the reason," she said.

He flashed her an easy grin. "You know I'm not a morning person."

"I've noticed," she said, still laughing as she pictured Matt sitting in early Mass with disheveled morning hair and a deeply displeased expression. "But I still don't believe you're skipping church out of laziness."

"I don't know. My dad went to this church when I was a kid. A lot of older members of the parish still remember him, and…what happened to him. I can hear them whispering about me whenever I do attend."

"I didn't know you'd been going there so long. You've always been religious?" she asked.

"For the most part. My dad and I would attend sometimes, but it wasn't anything regular. Major holidays, sometimes Sunday Mass. Then the orphanage was run by Catholic nuns, so…pretty religious," Matt said with a wry grin. His mention of being in an orphanage was casual as always, but her heart twisted anyway. She tried not to let on that it affected her, knowing that he would hate it if he interpreted it as pity. "I kind of fell out of the habit of going to church for most of college and law school."

"What made you come back?" she asked, though she suspected she already knew.

"Putting on the mask. Deciding to put it on for real, that is. Not just letting loose occasionally. At that point, no one knew yet. I needed that barometer, some way to gauge if I was going too far."

"He's not really what I'd expect a priest to be like, but…I liked him. He seems like he'd be honest with you."

"He is. There was a point last year, right at the worst part of everything going on with Fisk…I was seriously considering crossing a line. He helped keep me from making that mistake."

Sarah bit the inside of her cheek, keeping her eyes focused on the church and not on him. She knew what kind of mistake he was talking about—the one that he so strictly kept himself from making. One she had already made. And she knew how broken he would be if he ever did actually kill someone, wracked with guilt in a way that she wasn't.

"I guess he knows, then?" she asked. "Father Lantom, I mean. He knows about…what you do?"

"He does. I never really planned to tell him, but it was easy enough for him to figure out. But it makes it simpler. I don't have to hide anything when I talk to him about the things I've done. People…people I've hurt."

He didn't specify that she was on that list of people, but it was obvious to both of them.

"So, when he said that he'd heard a lot about me, he meant…"

Matt breathed out a rueful laugh, shaking his head.

"He, uh…he meant Confession," Matt said quietly, confirming her suspicion. "You've come up more than once. I'm sure that's not a surprise."

It wasn't a surprise by any stretch, but it also didn't sit right with her. Matt had done so much to help her. He could have done the bare minimum to keep her safe from the dangers of her job, and instead he'd time and time again given her what she'd needed to feel like a person again. But if his reaction to Lauren's disapproval was any indication, he didn't see it that way.

"You know you don't…have to talk about me in there," she said hesitantly. It didn't come out as she had intended, and seeing Matt's questioning look, she tried again, struggling to word what she wanted to express. "I just mean…well, from what I know about Confession, you tell your priest what you've done wrong, and they assign you some kind of…atonement. Right?"

"Penance," he clarified. "But yeah, that's the gist of it."

"Well, I'm not an expert on these things, but…I think you've done your penance, Matt," she told him softly. "You don't have to feel guilty about me forever. I'd really like to not add to all that weight on your shoulders."

She'd been hoping that the sentiment would help soften some of the frown lines in his brow. But unlike a normal person, Matt responded to her words with the same reaction she'd expect if she'd just slapped him. The corners of his eyes flinched slightly as his frown deepened into a pained grimace.

"Sarah, I…I told you, you don't need to make excuses for me. That's not on you—"

Sarah could feel him launching into the same speech he'd given her when she'd offered to talk to Lauren, and she cut him off.

"I'm not excusing you. I'm…just saying that I forgive you," she said with a shrug. It was really pretty simple, now that she said it. "You earned that a long time ago. I just…I just want to make sure you  _know_  that."

Matt seemed to be struggling with whether or not to continue arguing with her, but after a few moments he swallowed, then nodded.

Sarah was puzzled by the uncertainty on his face, as though he had no idea what to do with the information she'd just given him. It occurred to her suddenly that forgiveness didn't seem to be something he was used to receiving, and her heart twisted. Impulsively, she reached for his hand, lacing her fingers through his own and squeezing tightly. For a moment he didn't return the gesture, and—worried that she'd made him uncomfortable with the bluntness of her statement—she started to let go.

Matt caught her before she could slip it out of his, bringing her hand up to press his mouth to the back of it. He closed his eyes as he held her hand there, the feel of his five-o-clock shadow rough against her skin. Sarah's heartbeat stuttered as she watched him, transfixed. They stayed that way for a beat, and then he let go.

Before she could do much more than remember to breathe in, Matt stood up, slipping his dark glasses back on.

"I should get you home before it gets dark."

As they passed by the church again, Sarah lifted her gaze up towards the stained glass windows. If there really was some higher power inside those walls, she hoped it would help her, because God knew she had no idea what she was doing.

They walked slowly, enjoying the warm evening until they were several blocks away from the church. Then Matt stopped midsentence as something caught his attention.

He came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the sidewalk, his hand darting out to seize her arm tightly. Sarah stumbled to a stop and whipped her head around in surprise. He moving his head sharply, as though trying to locate something. She glanced around in alarm, but didn't see anything troubling.

"What's wrong?" she asked. He didn't answer, but there was a tension in his muscles that made her nervous. What was he picking up on? Was something about to happen? "Matt?"

It took a few more seconds before he shook his head.

"I…I thought I heard…" Matt trailed off, his brow furrowed. Then he shook his head. "Nothing. Sorry."

Sarah watched him in concern, noting the confusion and frustration playing across his features. Gingerly, she reached up to place her hand over the one currently holding her arm in a painful grip. The touch seemed to snap him out of it, and he let go instantly.

"Sorry," he repeated.

"It's okay," she said slowly. "What did you think you were hearing?"

He gave her a forced smile that she didn't believe for a second.

"Nothing. Listen, I, uh…I forgot that I had something I was going to look into."

"Uh huh," she said doubtfully. She thought it was strange that he was making up a cover story to tell her, of all people, but she wasn't about to stop him from going to do whatever it was he was really up to. "I guess I'll…see you later, then."

Matt nodded and started to leave, then turned back abruptly.

"You should…you should take the subway home," he told her.

Sarah laughed, looking around. There were tons of pedestrians around, and the sun had barely started setting. Surely he was joking.

"You're kidding," she said, but the serious look on his face indicated otherwise. "It's only a few more blocks, why would I—"

"Please, Sarah," he interrupted. Normally she might have argued with him further, but he looked so thrown by whatever he'd heard—or thought he heard—that she relented.

"I…okay," she said uncertainly. Matt looked relieved, and immediately turned to head in the opposite direction. "Good luck with your…mysterious…thing," she called after him.

A few minutes later she was standing on the crowded subway for her ridiculously short ride home. She idly rubbed her arm as she wondered what could have drawn such a strong reaction from Matt. She figured she would ask him later, but she had a feeling he wouldn't be very forthcoming. She also had a feeling whatever it was would cause trouble anyway.

She was right on both counts.


	30. One Step Forward

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, y'all! Long time no see. As usual, it was a long wait, but the chapter is finally here. Happy (very) belated two year anniversary, by the way! Before (or after) you read, you should check out some of the amazing fan works that readers on both FFN and AO3 have made for this story over the last two years. Most of them can be found on my AO3 profile here, but since it gives me a limited character count I have the longer list over on my FFN profile under the same pen name: 
> 
> BrittWitt16, Misery's-Toll, whodahoe, NicBarnes, MashedBraintatoes, BurningThroughTime, WinchesterDixonBros, and Khaleesis-Fire have made some amazing edits and photoshop banners with all sorts of face claims for Sarah, and a few also feature other characters like Lauren, Mitch, Ronan, and Jason.
> 
> HannahBananasxx and Misery's-Toll have also done some really fantastic drawings of Sarah and various scenes throughout the story. A lot of you have mentioned that you'd like to draw fan art of certain scenes, and in case I didn't get around to replying to you about that, the answer is: Yes, please! I would love that!
> 
> AmyIssen and onehandfeel went to a ton of hard work making fan videos of the story with excellent songs to accompany them, and Hardlife and Eliasfw created some audio read-throughs of early chapters of the story for anyone who would prefer to listen to it.
> 
> For anyone looking for a soundtrack while they read, there are now five of them: YoungInexperiencedHopefuls, Misery's-Toll, ClockworkHare, and theschuysthelimit have made some unbelievable playlists on 8tracks—and I've posted one of my own, as well.
> 
> Finally, dmcreif created the most excellent and detailed page for WTWD on TV Tropes, taking note of tropes that even I hadn't noticed. Be careful, though, because the website is very addictive.
> 
> I love all of you guys so much, and I'm so lucky that you've stuck through me for two whole years of watching these two characters be angsty and cute together. I hope you guys know that this story means just as much to me now as the day I started writing it, and that even if it takes me longer these days to get the chapters up, the chapters will come.
> 
> Okay, that's it, enough gushing. On to the story.

It had been four days since Matt had last heard Stick's phantom heartbeat echoing nearby, but he was still on high alert. He could admit that hearing it once could have been a fluke; his senses were strong but far from perfect. But he'd heard it for a second time when walking with Sarah: clear as a bell and unmistakably Stick's. It was only there for a second or two, and then it was gone. How was that possible? He was certain Stick knew countless tricks that he'd never gotten around to teaching Matt, and he wouldn't put it past him to be able to cloak his heartbeat somehow. But why would he be hanging around without confronting him?

Matt had to wonder if he was imagining it, if his subconscious was inserting danger and complication where there was none. As a child, when Stick first left, Matt's mind had tricked him more than once into thinking he sensed the older man's presence, imagining the heartbeat that he had so desperately wanted to hear again. Now, of course, the thought that Stick was close by just brought Matt frustration and paranoia—especially given that he'd had Sarah with him when he'd heard it.

He knew that Stick vehemently disapproved of his decision to maintain personal relationships, but he didn't think that the old man would actually hurt someone Matt cared about. Then again, he hadn't thought that Stick would actually murder that child in the shipping container, so how well did he really know his old mentor?

So on the chance that he wasn't imagining it, he'd been trying his hardest over the last few days to limit his contact with Sarah—at least until he could be sure. And it was difficult. He'd carefully sidestepped her questions about his sudden and unexplained exit after the church, providing some vague excuse about having heard a mugging nearby. She clearly hadn't believed him, and his distance the last few days surely hadn't helped. All of their conversations since had been over the phone—a vain attempt on Matt's part to avoid being around her in person, in the hopes that it would make it easier to keep away.

But tonight he'd had a long night, and the night before as well. And before he'd even really thought about it, his feet had begun to follow a familiar path across the rooftops of Hell's Kitchen until they landed on Sarah's fire escape.

On the other side of the window he could hear Sarah moving from her kitchen over to the table, where her laptop was open and streaming a video of what sounded like a news segment. Matt cocked his head when he heard a familiar name being spoken on the video.

_"…but for whatever reason we give Daredevil a pass, and for what reason? Because he wears a fun costume? People need to…"_

He knocked on the windowpane, and the video immediately paused.

When Sarah opened the window, her body language seemed slightly off, like she'd been caught off guard. It was probably because of whatever video she'd been watching, he assumed.

"Hey. I didn't think you'd be coming over tonight," she said. Her voice sounded slightly odd, like she was speaking around something in her mouth. There was a sharp, sterile scent floating around her, and Matt struggled to place it. It wasn't alcohol, though it smelled similar.

Matt pulled his mask off, cocking his head suspicious. "What's…up with your voice?"

"Hmm? Nothing," she said, her innocent tone betrayed by the way her hand automatically came up to cover her mouth. At his raised eyebrows, she let out an exhale of annoyance. "It's—they're teeth whitening strips. You're not supposed to talk when you have them in."

That explained the strange smell, at least; it was peroxide, not alcohol.

After hours of dealing with the darkest corners of Hell's Kitchen, standing now in Sarah's small apartment and hearing her talk about something as normal and boring as teeth whitening strips was a sharp contrast. It lent him an odd sense of relief, as though he had stumbled into some world completely separate from the dangerous, vicious one on the other side of the glass. He grinned, halfway hoping they would just keep talking about mundane things and never have to stray to topics like Orion.

Sarah, on the other hand, misinterpreted his grin as a mocking one.

"I assumed you weren't coming!" she said defensively. Matt wanted to point out that he hadn't been laughing at her, but now the sound of the slight lisp the teeth strips gave her made him start, so there was really no point. "Ugh. I'll be right back."

She padded barefoot down the hallway to her bathroom, leaving him alone to collect himself.

After a minute, he heard her returning.

"You've been MIA for four days and now you wait until I'm doing embarrassing beauty rituals to show up," she grumbled as she came back into the living room. Her speech had returned to normal, much to Matt's disappointment. Also to his disappointment, she had donned a thin hoodie—one of her own, not his—over her tank top.

"I haven't been MIA," Matt protested. "I've…called."

Sarah hummed low and skeptical, and Matt didn't blame her; even to his own ears it sounded lame. Because he _had_ been avoiding coming here, for days now. Specifically, since the night of Sarah's disastrous date and resulting relapse into drinking.

Matt had become used to the solitude that accompanied his choice to put on the mask—not just the mental isolation of it, but the physical part as well. The only contact he came into on a regular basis since becoming Daredevil was generally the kind that left nasty bruises. So Sarah's tendency towards easy affection was almost overwhelming at times, making it difficult for him to think straight. And never had it been more so than the last time he'd been in Sarah's apartment.

He'd heard her heartbeat speed up that night when he touched her, felt her goosebumps under his fingertips. It would have been so, so easy for him to kiss her right then, and the temptation had been strong enough that he'd had to take a literal step back and remind himself that whatever signals he was picking up were muddled by the alcohol circulating through her bloodstream.

Sarah dropped back down into the kitchen chair in front of her laptop, which she had apparently forgotten was still open.

"What are you watching?" he asked.

"Um…nothing. Just background noise," she said unconvincingly.

Matt tilted his head, raising his eyebrows and giving her a knowing half-smile.

"I heard them say the name 'Daredevil,' Sarah. Whatever it was, it can't be the worst thing someone has said about me."

He heard her sigh in resignation, the catch of her bottom lip as she worried it between her teeth.

"Cecilia's opinion pieces about you in the newspaper have been getting a lot of attention," she said reluctantly. "And some super low-budget local morning show offered to have her on to talk about what she's been writing. Lauren sent me the link."

_Cecilia. Of course._

Matt kept his face neutral as he took in the news. When Sarah had first brought up Lauren's cousin and her topic of choice for editorials, he'd mostly dismissed it; it wasn't the first time a reporter had written unfavorably about him, after all. But Cecilia was drawing more and more attention to him, and operating under the radar was a fairly important part of what he did. More public scrutiny was the last thing he needed.

"Can I…?" he nodded his head towards her laptop.

"I thought you ignored what people say about you."

"Usually. But at a certain point it's smarter to pay attention."

Sarah hedged for another moment before relenting. "Alright. If you're sure."

Resting his hand on the back of Sarah's chair, Matt leaned over her to hit the space bar on her laptop. He did his best not to focus on the immediate reaction she had to their proximity: the way she tensed almost imperceptibly with awareness, and her breathing became more carefully regulated. But more than that, he tried to ignore the accompanying rush of satisfaction that came along with the effect he was having on her, and the reckless impulse to make her heartbeat increase just a little bit higher.

That temptation faded into the background as he listened to the conversation playing out on the laptop between Cecilia and a male interviewer with a clipped accent.

_"—and obviously you've been making quite a name for yourself locally with these articles in the Bulletin,"_ the interviewer was saying _. "Has it been strange having your Twitter and email suddenly blow up with feedback?"_

_"No, not at all,"_ Cecilia answered. _"I've written about a few hot-button topics before, but this one just happens to interest a lot of people in Hell's Kitchen, specifically."_

_"People around here definitely have some strong opinions on Daredevil. He's saved a lot of people in this neighborhood."_

_"Yes, he has, and a lot of people who have responded to my articles seem to think I don't understand that, for whatever reason. Of course I know that he's saved people, but they're missing the fact that he's done so outside of the law,_ " she said _. "He picks and chooses who he helps and who he hurts, and at some point he's going to hurt an innocent person and we're all going to wonder why we ever gave him so much power."_

_"Recently on Twitter, you categorized Daredevil as 'violently anti-police'. Do you want to comment on that?"_

_"Absolutely. I think that if there's anything we can take away from the news for the past couple of years, it's that respecting and complying with the police is incredibly important."_

_"Well, I think some might argue that there's a different conclusion you could come to,"_ the interviewer interjected diplomatically.

_"Of course,"_ Cecilia allowed. Her voice was smooth and practiced, but underneath it Matt could hear a slight unevenness that betrayed her nerves. _"People will always try to spin things in whatever way. But right now, especially after so many in the NYPD were arrested in the Wilson Fisk sweep, we need to be rebuilding trust between the community and the police, and Daredevil is doing the opposite of that."_

_"You don't think it could be said that he's more supplementing the police department? Cutting through some of the red tape they have to deal with so that people who need help don't slip through the cracks?"_

_"No. I think that's the line most vigilantes want to use: that they're helping people. But just because he's fighting other violent criminals doesn't mean he's_ not _one. And the police don't see him as an ally. He's forcing them to waste resources trying to get this lunatic off the streets when they could be doing so many more important things. And especially after those officers were shot last year—"_

_"—but he was cleared of that, just to be…I mean, just to not confuse any viewers,"_ the interviewer said.

_"Right, of course. It all got very complicated as to who was responsible for what, but just because he_ didn't _do it doesn't mean that he_ wouldn't _, and he's never done anything to make that clear, which I think is important. It's certainly important to the NYPD and I think it should matter to the citizens of Hell's Kitchen as well."_

_"And if the man in the mask is as reckless and unpredictable as you say, are you at all worried about attracting the wrong kind of attention with these articles? What if you come home one night to find the Devil himself waiting in your living room?"_ the interviewer asked with a chuckle.

_"No, I'm not worried at all,"_ Cecilia said, sounding just a little too confident to be entirely believable _._ Matt noted this with a twinge of dark satisfaction that he wished wasn't there. _"He relies on the goodwill of New Yorkers to keep himself from getting arrested, so he can't afford to slip-up and start taking out journalists. Besides, if he's doing as much good as some of these bleeding-heart fans seem to think, he should really be too busy to be reading about himself in the newspaper."_

_"Alright, well that's all the time we have for today, but thanks so much for coming on the show, Cecilia. Viewers, as usual you can find all of our guests' Twitter handles on our website, and we'd love to hear what you think! Just tweet us with the hashtag #QuentinInTheMorning and we might feature your feedback on the next episode."_

The clip cut off, leaving a tense silence in the room. Matt could feel Sarah's concerned gaze on him, and he forced a unperturbed grin.

"Well, she's right. I probably won't be reading her articles in the newspaper," he said dryly.

"She's an idiot, Matt."

"It's fine. Like I said, that's not the worst thing anyone has said about me by far. Not even the worst thing today, actually." That much was true. It wasn't what she was saying that had him concerned so much as the platform she had and the very manipulative way she was saying it.

"Well, she shouldn't be saying any of it. It's all bullshit."

He automatically began pacing, but his foot bumped against a plastic storage bin after a couple of steps. In fact, now that he paid attention, he could sense several boxes and bins all around her floor.

"Are you stress cleaning your apartment again?" he asked, glad to have something he could change the subject to.

"Hmm? Oh, no. Before I got distracted by that video I was looking for some of my old sheet music. I had packed most of it away somewhere when I stopped playing, and now that I need it I have no idea where it is." She lightly kicked one of the bins. "I think it might be stored at my dad's house, actually. I'll look for it when I help him pack the place up."

"Have you had the chance to go practice yet?"

Sarah nodded. "I went yesterday."

"How did it go?"

"It'll take me a while to get back to where I was, obviously, but…you found me basically the perfect place to do it."

"Really?" he asked skeptically. He was very aware that an old piano in the back room of a church was nowhere close to what she was probably used to having access to.

"Really," she confirmed. "I can go when I have time, and stay as long as I want. No irritable pianists waiting outside the door for their timeslot to start. I'm glad you decided to bring me there."

In truth, he very nearly hadn't. The idea of combining those two parts of his life had made him anxious, and he wasn't sure why he'd decided to go through with it. Maybe to prove that he could be part of her 'normal' life when this was all over, that they could have something connecting them that didn't involve blood or masks or secrets. Or maybe he just liked the idea of her spending time somewhere he knew she was safe. Sitting in that church always made him feel like someone was watching over him, and Lord knew he wanted someone watching over her when he couldn't.

"So am I," he said quietly, before making himself turn businesslike again. He'd come here for a reason, after all. "Uh, you said you had something?"

"Oh, yeah," Sarah said, as though she'd forgotten. "Um, I heard Jason talking about some big meetup that's happening soon. Weapons of some kind, I think. He's not going to be there, but he was giving instructions to someone over the phone and it sounded like there would be a whole group of them."

"Do you know where?"

"No," she said apologetically. "Or when, except that it's soon. This week or next, I think. But I did get the phone number of the guy he was talking to, and the address that's attached to it."

"Good. I can start there."

Sarah gave him the address, which was on the other side of town. Matt figured he'd check it out tomorrow night. Right now it was already late, and he'd had a long, difficult night. So when Sarah asked him if he wanted to stick around for a little while longer, he didn't say no.

* * *

At least a few times a month, Jason would tell Sarah with little warning that he would be staying 'a little late' at the office and needed her to stay at her post as well. For most companies, that would mean an hour or two past closing time at five; for Jason, it usually meant until ten or eleven at night. He would often spend those extra hour holed up in his office, descending down some rabbit hole of obsessively reviewing security tapes from Orion's various properties. Sarah always hoped that as long as she was stuck at work, she could use the time to catch up on the backlog of paperwork on her desk, but it seemed like even at night the stream of visitors to Jason's office never slowed down.

It was just going on ten o'clock on one of those nights, and Jason had left the office to go do something, leaving Sarah to do work when all she wanted was to be home. She was sifting through the pile of mail on her desk, sorting the junk out from important papers. One envelope in particular caught her eye, and—thinking it was some filing papers Jason had been impatiently waiting for—she quickly opened it. She was surprised when, instead of paperwork, several large photos slid out onto her desk.

With an uncertain frown, she picked one up and studied it, her heart sinking as she realized what she was looking it. It was a wide shot of the outside of the police precinct, with a woman she now recognized as Mrs. McDermott passing out flyers on the steps. In one of the photos you could clearly see Aaron McDermott's face on the flyers. In another, she was standing outside the courthouse holding a large, hand-painted sign that read: _Help me bring my son back home._

"Oh, no," Sarah muttered softly. "Why are you doing this?"

Among the photos was a note:

_Jason-_

_Thought you'd be interested in these photos._

_You might want to take care of this before it gets out of hand._

It wasn't signed, and there was no indication who it was from; it could have been sent from any number of eyes that Jason seemingly had everywhere around the city. Sarah's gaze lingered on the phrase _'take care of this'_. There was little ambiguity as to what that meant. If Mrs. McDermott didn't stop her public search soon, she was almost guaranteed to meet a similar end as her son.

The quiet _ding_ of the elevator arriving on her floor brought her out of her thoughts, and Sarah snapped her head up to see Jason walking down the hallway, immersed in texting something on his phone.

She quickly gathered the photos up and slid them into the bottom drawer of her desk, closing it just as Jason approached. But she needn't have worried; Jason was so engrossed in whatever conversation he was having that he didn't even spare her a glance before closing his office door behind him.

Letting out an anxious exhale, Sarah gazed down at the closed drawer. What was she supposed to do about McDermott's mother? She couldn't let Jason find out, or he would kill the poor woman for bringing too much attention to them. But she also couldn't think of any way to convince a grieving mother to not seek justice for her son's disappearance.

Sarah snapped out of her thoughts as she heard someone approaching and looked up to see an employee she recognized, but couldn't name. The man always wore a tracksuit in some jewel tone; today it was a deep emerald color. She remembered him as being one of the men who had been present at Orion the first night Matt had broken in, and at the subsequent meeting when Jason had first come to the company. He'd been wearing an ugly mustard yellow tracksuit then, she recalled vaguely.

"Is he in there?" Tracksuit asked. He had a cell phone to his ear and appeared to be half-listening to it.

"Yeah, just hang and I'll tell him y—" she began, but he was already opening the door before she could finish. "—Okay. Your funeral," she muttered.

But when she heard Jason's voice grow loud and agitated on the other side of the door, it didn't sound like it was aimed at Tracksuit. Sure enough, when the two emerged from the office, Jason was shouting into the cell phone the other man had just been holding.

"—well find out why he didn't show up and make sure no one else leaves. I'll come deal with it myself," he snapped before hanging up the phone.

"Pull the car up," he said, holding his keys out to Tracksuit.

"I don't know how to drive stick," he said blankly.

Jason let out a noise of disgust before his eyes snapped to Sarah, whose presence he finally seemed to remember.

"Sarah," he said briskly, tossing her the keys. She fumbled to catch them. "Come with us."

She quickly snatched her bag and followed them to the stairwell. She knew she should probably try to covertly text Matt, but there was no time, and no way to do it without them noticing.

Minutes later they were driving as fast as Sarah could manage with traffic, weaving in and out of cars. Jason was in the passenger seat next to her, and Tracksuit was in the back. She had no idea where they were headed or why, and Jason didn't speak beyond telling her the next turn.

From inside his jacket pocket, he removed something small and gray, the metal glinting as they passed under a streetlight. A jolt of fear shot through Sarah as she realized it was a gun.

"Wh-where are we going?" she asked, trying to keep an eye on both the road and the firearm.

"None of your concern. Drive faster."

Jason was messing with the gun, checking the contents multiple times as though they would change when he wasn't looking, and the constant clicking sound was making Sarah nervous. Tracksuit seemed unbothered, and she suspected he was probably armed as well. Maybe Lauren was right, and she _should_ have bought a gun.

"Go into that parking garage up ahead," Jason said. "Drive to the top."

As they entered the garage, Sarah was met with an unsettling suspicion that they were heading to the weapons trade that she had told Matt about. Nothing else would have Jason this uptight, and they used parking garages all around Hell's Kitchen for meeting just like that.

She cursed at herself internally for not finding a way to text or call Matt when she had the chance. Now the entire thing was going to go down without anyone to stop it, and they'd have to wait until the next time so many Orion employees were in one spot.

But as it turns out, she didn't need to call Matt. Because as they turned the corner into the garage, he was already there, deep in the middle of causing a remarkable amount of chaos, which they were headed straight towards.

Sarah gasped and slammed on the breaks hard. The car screeched to a stop about ten feet from the ongoing fray.

"What are you doing?" Jason barked at her. "Keep going!"

She turned her head to say something—she didn't know what, but _something_ —but she never got the chance. Maybe if she had, Matt would have heard her voice coming from the car and known it was her. But as it was, his focus was trained on the men he was fighting and the car that was very likely about to run him over, and he wasn't listening for familiar heartbeats or scents. Had he known that she was the one driving the car, he probably wouldn't have done what he did next, which was to send one of his opponents flying through the windshield directly at them.

Sarah saw the man's large silhouette come hurtling towards them out of the corner of her eye, and she lurched to the side a millisecond before impact, whipping her hands up to protect her face just as the body smashed through the glass. Jason's reflexes had been slower, and she heard his screech of pain as dozens of tiny glass shards flew at both of them.

The shock of what had just happened made the next few seconds pass by very slowly. Tiny pieces of glass fell from her clothes as Sarah sat up straight again, inhaling jerkily. The first thing she saw was the man who'd been thrown through the glass: he was bloody and bruised, but it looked like he was breathing. She slowly turned her gaze towards Jason, and couldn't bite back a startled gasp as she caught sight of his face.

He had taken _far_ more of the brunt of the impact than she had, and the glass had embedded itself deep into his skin. Shards of glass were still glinting inside long cuts that sent rivulets of blood down his face. He looked like something out of a horror movie, his expression twisted furiously underneath all of the blood.

In the distance, she could hear sirens approaching.

"Cops are coming," Tracksuit informed them unnecessarily, leaning forward between them. His location in the backseat had spared him from getting cut by any of the glass.

" _Dammit_ ," Jason snarled. "We need to go."

Sarah fumbled with the clutch and the rusty gearshift, unable to keep herself from glancing up at the fight still roaring in front of them. Her sight was partially concealed by the unconscious man still sprawled on the hood of the car, but behind him she could see Matt perform a complicated backflip, his boots connecting hard with the side of one man's head before he swung his fist around to catch another in the mouth.

"Reverse it!" Jason shouted at her. "Now!"

The car still wasn't cooperating, and Sarah jammed her foot down on the clutch again and wrenched at the gearshift, eliciting a loud grinding from the car as it stubbornly refused to shift into reverse.

"I'm—I'm trying!" she exclaimed. "It's stuck!"

She looked up again just in time to see the realization hit Matt as he heard her voice. His lips parted as his head whipped in their direction, his concentration on the fight faltering just for a second as he recognized who was in the car. Then he was back to it, so quickly that anyone else but her wouldn't have noticed.

At least, that's what she thought. She was looking at Matt, so she didn't see Jason watching both of them, taking in the brief reaction they both had with narrowed eyes.

The sirens still sounded like they were far away but drawing closer as the car finally shifted into reverse, and Sarah slammed on the accelerator. The man on the hood tumbled off, landing on the pavement as the car reversed across the garage. She quickly shifted into drive and sped towards the exit.

"The cops are blocks away!" Tracksuit shouted from the backseat. "We can still get the man in the mask!"

Sarah only drove faster, hoping that Jason wouldn't agree and demand that they turn around. But he wasn't even listening, too busy swearing and pulling glass from his bloody skin. Behind her, Tracksuit fumbled for something on the floor.

She was just about to turn the corner out of the parking garage and away from the action when there was a deafening bang just inches from her ear, wrenching another terrified scream from her throat as she instinctively slammed on the breaks yet again. Everyone in the car pitched forward at the abrupt stop, and then there was a stillness, filled by nothing but a high-pitched ringing in her ears.

Sarah gripped the steering while tightly and squeezed her eyes shut as a steady stream of swearwords tumbled out of her mouth. Still shell-shocked from the sound, it took her brain a few seconds to realize that Tracksuit had fired a gun out the window from inside the small space—and that he had fired it at Daredevil.

She wrenched her eyes open, whipping her head around in panic to try to spot Matt. Her head pounded at the sharp movement, but she didn't care; there was little room left in her mind for anything but relief when she saw Matt still fighting with no apparent bullet holes in his body.

"Shit, I missed," Tracksuit said, his voice muffled as though he was underwater.

"There's no time," Jason snapped at him, before turning his still horrifically bloody features towards Sarah. "Keep driving."

Sarah hit the gas immediately, the tires screeching as they finally sped out of the garage and down the street.

"That was a goddamn disaster," Jason ground out. "Take a right up here."

Sarah did so, followed by a left and then another right. He had her come to a stop outside a row of tall, expensive apartment buildings, where he got out.

"You," Jason spat out, eyeing Tracksuit through the window. "Get back to the office and find out who the police managed to arrest in that parking garage and who got away." Tracksuit nodded, and Jason turned his attention to Sarah. "And _you_. Take this car to the warehouse to get fixed. Don't let yourself be seen."

Sarah's stomach dropped; the warehouse was clear on the other side of town. How was she not supposed to get spotted with a completely shattered front windshield? Nearly all of it was gone, leaving just a ring of conspicuous jagged glass around the edges. In addition to that, there was a very noticeable dent in the hood where the man had landed.

"But I—" she began, but at the unhinged look Jason gave her she stopped. "O-okay. Got it."

With that, Jason turned and stormed off. Sarah watched him in the mirror, trying to see what building he went into as she pulled away from the curb.

She and Tracksuit didn't speak as she drove down one of the back streets, speeding but trying not to go so fast that she would attract more attention.

"The turn is coming up," he said finally.

Sarah ignored him, focusing instead on making sure there were no cop cars around.

"Hey!" Tracksuit said, apparently under the impression that she couldn't hear him over the gunshot-inflicted hearing loss. "The turn! Is coming up!

Sarah groaned. "Shut _up_ , Tracksuit, I know."

"My name is _Kevin_ ," he replied indignantly, but she didn't care.

With a shaking hand she slid her phone out of her pocket to quickly check the screen, but she had no missed calls. Matt must still be dealing with Orion employees, or—worse yet—the cops. A shock of anger went through her as she glanced in her rearview mirror at the other occupant in the car. She was aware that getting shot at probably wasn't uncommon for Matt, given his line of work. But knowing that he might be dead right now if the man in her backseat had had just slightly better aim made her feel lightheaded with anger. All she wanted was him out of her car.

When they came to as stop sign on an empty street she slammed on the breaks one more time.

"Get out," she said shakily.

"What? No. Jason said to take me to the office."

"No, he said for you to go there, not that I had to take you," Sarah argued, her voice sounding much more certain than she felt. "It's in the opposite direction from the warehouse, s-so get out."

"Screw you, I'm not walking there. Take me to the office."

Sarah wanted to scream. Yes, she had to take orders from Jason, and now from Vanessa. And before them it had been Ronan, and before Ronan it was Wesley. But she did _not_ have to take orders from Tracksuit Kevin.

She whipped her head around to glare at him. "Jason is already going to be pissed about not catching Daredevil, and you firing a _gun_ inside this _freaking tiny car_ didn't help, so you need to get out and let me do what he said before he literally. Murders. Us both."

Her voice was taking on that slightly hysterical tone that she hated. Apparently Tracksuit hated it too, because after a few seconds of staring at her he threw his hands up before reaching over to yank hard on the door handle. He muttered something about women and mood swings as he got out of the car. Then the door slammed behind him and Sarah drove away as fast as she could.

* * *

Through whatever stroke of luck, Sarah's battered car didn't cross paths with anyone who would care about its condition, and she made its safely to the warehouse. Sarah had calmed down slightly when she arrived at the address, where she could see Rob, the owner, out in the yard, already working on a different car. Luckily his teenage son didn't seem to be around. His face fell as he saw her pulling through the gates with the shattered windshield.

She got out of the car and lingered awkwardly behind the open car door.

"Hi," she said finally. "Um, I don't know if you remember me—"

"Please tell me there ain't a dead person in that trunk."

Clearly he did remember her, then. His voice sounded slightly muffled, thought not as badly as Tracksuit's had earlier. She took that as a good sign that the ringing in her ears wouldn't be permanent.

"Oh, uh, no," she said quickly. "Well—I mean—I guess I haven't looked. But I'm pretty sure there's not. We just need you to fix it up."

Rob glanced at her strangely as he approached the car. "You tryin' to wake up the neighborhood?"

"What?"

"You're talking real loud."

Sarah's face flushed; her hearing was still on the fritz from the gunshot. "Sorry."

"Don't know why you had to bring that car here. Lot of places can fix windshields for cheap," Rob said, warily eyeing the car's busted windshield and dented hood. When he caught sight of the blood on the shattered glass, resigned understanding crossed his face. "Oh."

"I didn't run anyone over," Sarah explained, as though Rob would believe her. "A—a guy just got thrown into my windshield."

Rob didn't reply, instead shaking his head and beginning to inspect the damage to the vehicle.

"Do you know where the closest bus stop is?" she asked him, exhaustion slipping into her voice. She didn't think there was one around for several blocks, but her go-to person for walking her home was probably still dealing with Orion employees.

"You can't walk to the bus stop from here," he said, looking at her like she was crazy. "You know what kind of area this is?"

"Well, I don't have money for a cab, so unless you want me to sleep in your driveway…" Sarah shrugged.

Rob eyed her speculatively, then heaved a deep sigh.

"I'll drive you."

"What?" she said in surprise and a little bit of alarm. "Oh, no, y-you don't have to do that."

"Your bosses come visiting me enough as it is. I don't need them coming around askin' how you got stabbed walking home."

"They wouldn't care," she said honestly.

Rob gestured towards the one car in the yard that looked like it was currently working.

"Just get in," he said tiredly.

Sarah struggled to figure out the likelihood that he was going to murder her. Deciding that it seemed less likely than most other people she had met through Orion, she slowly made her way over to the car. But she kept her hand near the pepper spray in her pocket all the same, leaning against the inside of passenger side door as they pulled out of the gate.

She glanced in the side mirror to check the damage the shattered glass had left on her skin. Luckily, her injuries were nowhere near as bad as Jason's; just a few stray scratches on her face and neck where the blood had already dried. Nothing that shouldn't heal within a week or so.

"Why do you do this?" Rob asked after a few minutes of driving in silence. At her questioning look, he elaborated, "Every time you come around, you look like you're about to throw up. Doesn't seem like you enjoy your job."

Sarah hesitated. If this was a strange test set up by Jason, it was an obscure one.

"This…wasn't really a career path that I chose," she said, leaving it vague.

She could feel Rob watching her for a long moment.

"Me neither."

They didn't say anything else for the rest of the ride, until she had him pull up about a block away from her apartment. Despite him not giving off any particularly murder-y vibes, she still figured it was best that he not know her exact address. She thanked him as she opened the door, and he just nodded.

She felt Matt's presence as soon as she got out of the car, so when he appeared out of the shadows with only a murmured "—it's me—" as a warning, she was proud that she only jumped slightly. He quickly steered her into a construction overhang concealed by tarps where a bodega was redoing their storefront.

"Are you alright?" he asked as soon as they were out of sight of the sidewalk.

The question struck her as oddly ridiculous; out of the two of them, she wasn't the one who had just gotten shot at while fighting a half-dozen people. Her eyes caught on the dark bruise forming along his jaw, then on the blood glittering through a tear in his sleeve.

"Sarah," he repeated sharply, prompting her to answer.

"Yeah, Matt," she said softly. "I'm fine."

Matt nodded, but he was already working one of his gloves off. He brought his hand up to her face, checking for injuries. Her breathing hitched as his thumb brushed against a small, shallow cut just at the corner of her mouth. He paused for just a second, then gently tilted her head to the side to inspect the scratches on her neck as well. Her brain finally began to register that she was no longer in a speeding car with a furious, bleeding Jason next to her, and the spiky adrenaline that had flooded her system began to fade. Sarah closed her eyes, choosing to focus on bringing her breathing back down to normal and not on the tiny sparks of electricity that were dancing across her skin wherever Matt's calloused fingertips touched her.

Once he was satisfied that she was still in one piece, he let his hand fall back to his side, and Sarah felt a twinge of disappointment. It was probably for the best, though, so that her heartbeat wasn't echoing loudly around the tiny enclosure they were occupying.

"I didn't know you were in that car," he said. His tone was softer now that he'd established she hadn't been injured.

Sarah nodded. "I figured, when you, um…tossed a person through the windshield."

"What happened? I thought you and Jason weren't going."

"I didn't think we were. But I guess someone called Jason when you showed up to the swap, or—or maybe when someone else didn't show up? I don't know. It happened really fast. I didn't even realize that's where we were going until we got there."

Matt swore under his breath and turned away, rubbing his jaw. She recognized a familiar tension in his posture; he was on edge, probably feeling guilty about what had happened. Which was ridiculous, of course; Matt couldn't just avoid fighting criminals on the off chance that one of them was Sarah.

"What happened after I left?" she asked him, hoping to redirect the conversation away from their mistakes and towards some sort of accomplishment.

"Managed to subdue the ones who didn't drive off, and left them for the cops to take care of," he said, turning back to her. "Most of them had previous charges that will keep them locked up. A few we'll have to wait and see, but I think what the police found tonight will be enough to get them put away. Assuming that the officers do their jobs correctly."

"What happened to the…windshield guy?" she asked tentatively.

Matt paused. "He'll be healing in a jail cell, but he'll be fine."

Sarah winced, but nodded.

"What happened with you and Jason and…whoever was shooting at me?"

"Tracksuit," she answered absently. Matt tilted his head doubtfully at the name, but didn't question it. "It…went okay. I brought the car to the warehouse, and kicked Tracksuit out of my car on a street corner."

She couldn't see the top half of Matt's face under his mask, but she knew he had his eyebrows raised. "You did?"

"He shot at you."

"Yeah, a lot of people do."

"Well, they're—they're not allowed in my car either," she said indignantly.

Matt shook his head, and for the first time that night an actual smile flashed across his face, albeit an exasperated one.

"Alright. What about Jason?"

"You're definitely back on his radar. He's been distracted by Vanessa, but…I think now you're going to be in his crosshairs."

Below his mask, Matt's smile mouth twisted into a something a little harder. "Good."

Sarah cast her eyes upward at the dark canopy above them. Could he even _try_ to pretend like he wasn't excited by the promise of reckless danger?

"He went into some apartment building on 59th. I don't know if he lives there, or…?" She shrugged. "He might have been going to get his face fixed. It got pretty sliced up; I think it's going to scar a lot and he's going to look, like, really scary."

The smile was completely gone now. "Yeah. We're lucky that wasn't you."

"Hey," she said. "I'm _fine_. Really."

She spun around with her arms spread, demonstrating how very intact she was.

Matt's mouth pressed into an unhappy line as he reached up and pulled something out of her hair, holding it up for her to see: a jagged piece of glass from the windshield. It made a tiny clinking noise as he tossed it on the ground.

"That was already there," she said, hoping to lighten the mood. It was still early enough that Matt would be going back out to patrol, and she really didn't want him distracting himself with whatever guilty inner monologue she could tell was already looping around in his head.

"It's not funny."

"I know. But…that's kind of one of the complications of all this, isn't it? I work for the bad guys, Matt," she said gently. "Sometimes we're going to be on opposite sides of things, and—and things can get dangerous. I know that. So do you. We knew it going in."

Matt took a deep breath, exhaling slowly and rubbing the back of his head. "I guess we've kind of forgotten about that part lately."

She knew he was right. They'd been messing around too much, caught up in each other instead of focusing on the very real dangers of what they were doing.

"Yeah. I guess we have."

"We need to be more careful."

"We will be," she agreed truthfully. "We'll just—we'll make sure that we know the next time we're going to end up in the same place like that, and we can try to, you know, avoid things like…everything that just happened. It'll be fine."

She could tell he wasn't convinced, but what else could she say? There wasn't much else they could do to make things safer, and she had a horrible sinking feeling he was going to take this as an opportunity to distance himself again.

Matt sighed, leaning against the wall next to her so that their shoulders were touching. She turned her head to watch him in the dark.

"I don't want to be the reason you get hurt, Sarah."

"You won't be," she said firmly.=

Unfortunately, that wasn't true. But for that moment, she really did believe it.

* * *

Jason didn't come back to the office that week, instead communicating through emails and phone calls. Sarah wasn't surprised; everything from his hair to his suit was always immaculately tailored and groomed, so he seemed like just the type to not show his face while it was marred by deep cuts. She wished she'd had the same luxury of staying home when her own skin had been littered in bruises and scars from Ronan, but she would settle instead for this small victory of getting a break from Jason.

Without having to rush back and forth between Vanessa and Jason, Sarah was actually able to take a proper lunch break, and she met up in the park with Lauren to grab coffee (or in Sarah's case, green tea, as she had found that caffeine jitteriness didn't mix well with her already nerve-wracking job).

"I can't believe Todd turned out to be such a dickhead," Lauren said as they walked in the shade, away from the runners and bikers on the path.

"I guess maybe we should have seen that coming. His name is Todd, after all."

"Excellent point," Lauren conceded. "But still, I'm sorry he just ditched you like that. We will so not be letting him photograph anything for us again. And Greg has sworn to no longer ask him how his weekend went when he says good morning to him on Mondays, which is about as close to revenge as Greg gets."

Sarah grinned as she idly tapped her fingers on her cup, the tune to one of the songs she was learning stuck in her head.

"I haven't seen you do that in a long time."

Sarah looked over at her. "Do what?"

"That weird imaginary piano thing you do," Lauren said, nodding towards Sarah's hand. "When you're learning a new song."

Sarah stilled her hand sheepishly. "I hadn't noticed I was doing it."

"You never have. You used to do it in class and it would drive me insane."

"Like you paid attention in class anyway."

"Well, regardless. It's kind of nice that you've picked up the annoying habit again," Lauren said. "Even if you are practicing in a dark lair somewhere."

"I'm not playing in a lair," Sarah said with a laugh. Lauren had been surprised to hear that Daredevil had been the one to find Sarah a place to practice, but she'd been mostly understanding when Sarah had said that she couldn't tell her where that place was, much to her relief. "It's just a normal room with a piano."

"I need you to know that I'm imagining you playing somewhere with, like, a very Phantom of the Opera vibe. Maybe in an underground cave, but the kind with oriental rugs and chandeliers. I assume he lives somewhere like that."

"He doesn't live in a cave. I don't think there are even any conveniently located caves near Hell's Kitchen to live in."

"But no where else fits his aesthetic," Lauren countered. "These guys always live in either a cave lair or a mansion. Wait—does he live in a mansion? Is he a billionaire?"

Sarah couldn't help picturing the warm but less than impressive office of Nelson and Murdock, and how utterly mundane Lauren would find Matt's real-life identity compared to the fantastical, ridiculous version of him she'd conjured up in her imagination.

"Definitely not."

"Oh. Good."

"Why is that good?"

"Well, firstly because it would mean he's just an idiot for not wearing a fancier suit if he could afford it…"

"That's fair," Sarah agreed, nodding along. Matt's costume really was useless, if the number of times she'd had to patch him up was any indicator.

"…and secondly because then I would worry that you were only into him for his money."

Sarah was still nodding from Lauren's first point when she registered the second part.

"Sorry, what?" she said.

"You know, how you totally have the hots for our neighborhood vigilante and have been assuming that no one would notice," Lauren said calmly. "If he was rich, I'd never know if you had actually fallen for the Devil of Hell's Kitchen or if you had just secretly turned into a gold digger."

Sarah stared at her for a long, long beat. A denial was already poised on the tip of her tongue— _"You're crazy, I just work with him, I would never have feelings for someone like that,"_ —but instead she let out a loud, surprised laugh. Tilting her head back, she pinched the bridge of her nose tiredly. Really, what was the point in denying it? It was all so ridiculous, and even if Lauren judged her it wouldn't help Sarah get over her feelings.

"Jesus. What is wrong with me?" she asked Lauren.

"Nothing is wrong with you, dummy," Lauren said. "Except that you didn't tell me right away."

"Honestly, I didn't figure it out myself until pretty recently," Sarah admitted.

"That would shock precisely no one. You're not exactly the poster girl for being in tune with your emotions."

"That's because they're silly, useless ones that won't lead to anything good," she insisted. "It's embarrassing enough that you can tell, and I'm positive that he can sense it—"

"—sense it? What, does he have superpowers?" Lauren said jokingly, giving an amused snort. Then, seeing Sarah's face, she added. "Holy shit, does he have superpowers?"

"No, of course not," Sarah said with a forced laugh. "That would be ridiculous."

Lauren turned to give her a heavily skeptical look. For a second it looked like she was going to ask more about the subject, but then she held up a finger.

"Okay, how's this: I will pretend like you didn't say anything about superpowers if _instead_ we can talk about whatever's going on between the two of you without you changing the subject. Because honestly, New York already has a giant green building-smasher and a flying guy with a hammer, so superpowers are kind of old news. You being interested in any guy who's not boring as dirt, on the other hand, is new. So…?"

Sarah sighed in resignation.

"There really isn't anything to talk about."

"Well, you two are a thing?"

"No," Sarah said quickly. "No, no. That would be… _way_ too complicated. This is just—I don't even know what. Adrenaline and—and…confusion. It's not going to turn into anything. Ever."

"But you guys have hooked up, at least," Lauren speculated.

Sarah shook her head, and her friend's eyes widened in surprised.

"Wait, really?"

"No," Sarah said, a little caught off guard that Lauren seemed so shocked. "Why did you think we had?"

"Uh, where do you want me to start? His reaction to you going on a date, for one. Homeboy was jealous as hell."

"He wasn't jealous," Sarah protested. "He's just…protective."

"Mhm. Protective of his chances of getting into your pants."

"Lauren," Sarah groaned. "That's not helpful."

"What? How?"

"Because I'm trying to shut this thing down, and hearing something like that just—just doesn't help."

"By 'this thing' you mean…human emotion?" Lauren speculated. "Good luck."

"No, by 'this thing' I mean…a dumb crush," Sarah said. "That's all it is."

"Right, right. Well that's, you know…" Lauren shrugged. "…bullshit, but okay."

"Excuse me?"

"I've seen you guys together first hand more than once. Three times, in fact, if you count that first time—which I do, because he was shirtless and that's relevant right now—"

"—focus, Lauren—"

"Right. How about the other night, then, when you came back from your date?"

"What about it?"

"Um, you might have forgotten, but I _was_ actually in the room with you guys for a while. Not that either of you would know. I'm pretty sure Greg could have walked in and starting making tea on your stove and neither of you would have noticed."

"Yes, I was paying more attention to the man with the bleeding stomach wound than to you," Sarah admitted dryly. "You got me."

"Hey, for once I'm not complaining about not being the center of attention," Lauren said, holding her hands up innocently. "I'm just saying…people don't act like that with each other when they just want to bang. They act like that when they want to bang and then do something disgusting, like take selfies of themselves feeding each other brunch on the same side of the booth."

Sarah grimaced, trying to imagine Matt partaking in any part of that scenario. She was a little relieved when she couldn't.

"You and Greg do that literally every Sunday morning," she pointed out. "I've seen it on Instagram."

"Because we are a disgustingly cute couple, Sarah, keep up. The point is, whatever is going on there is not crush material. It looked like something…a lot more intense. And way complicated."

_Intense and complicated_ , Sarah thought wryly. _The Matt Murdock specialty._

Meanwhile, Lauren was still rambling.

"—and I get it. Objectively, if you weren't my best friend, I'd probably encourage it. The whole saving people thing. It's hot. I get it. And that body is _no_ joke."

"That's not—I mean…that doesn't hurt," Sarah allowed, her mind unwillingly flashing to the image of the shirtless vigilante stretched out on her bed, holding her hair back from her face for her with a wicked grin on his face. She shook her head, pushing her hair behind her ear. "But it's not about that."

"So, what is it about?"

That was too complex of a question for Sarah to start thinking about on her lunch break, so she dodged the question.

"I thought you'd be a lot more disapproving," she told Lauren.

Her friend was quiet for a while, which was unusual. When she finally spoke, it sounded like she was struggling with what she wanted to say.

"When you started working at Orion, you…disappeared. You wouldn't answer my texts or my calls, and when I got to see you every, what, two months? You weren't eating, you wouldn't talk about your life…you were always so sad, except for when you were drunk. It was like I was hanging out with your ghost, and I didn't know why."

"I'm sorry," Sarah replied softly, an automatic reply these days. But Lauren waved her apology away.

"No, I get it. I mean I understand now why you got like that. All quiet and thin and—and jumpy. But…you've been getting better. Since right around the time you started working with him. I missed you so much, and now it's—it's like…you're coming back. And obviously the credit for that goes to you and not to him, but…it seems like the more time you spend with him, the more you've been _you_ again, so…I can be kind of okay with him being in your life."

Sarah smiled at that; it wasn't a declaration that the two of them would ever be friends, but it was good enough. "I'm glad."

"I mean, I won't pretend like I think this is a great thing. But you're an adult, and a smart one. I just need to figure out a way to reconcile going from watching a news segment of this guy breaking someone's legs to us having a rom-com style chat about him in the park, you know?"

"Speaking of him being in the news, what is up with your cousin and how obsessed with Daredevil she is? Can she, like…chill out?"

"Cecilia has never chilled out since the day she was born," Lauren said with an eye roll. "Probably bitching about something right out of the womb."

"Is she going to keep writing articles about him?" Sarah asked.

"Probably. She loves the attention, and she loves people telling her she's right."

"But…you don't think she's right," Sarah pushed hesitantly. "…right?"

"I guess not," Lauren said with a sigh. "I think he's kind of an asshole personality-wise, but not a menace to society or whatever Cecilia calls him. And he wasn't entirely awful the last time we met, but that was probably just because he was bleeding out."

"Probably," Sarah said with a grin.

The teasing tone faded from Lauren's voice as she fixed Sarah with a worried look. "Just…just be careful, okay? Not just in the don't-get-murdered-by-your-boss way. I know you can handle yourself, but…make sure you really know what you're doing before you get invested in someone like that."

Sarah knew it was a little late for that, but it wasn't worth getting into, so she juts nodded.

"Okay."

They kept walking in silence for another minute before Lauren spoke up again.

"But if you do sleep with him, you have to tell me."

"Ugh, Lauren."

"Like…in detail," she said seriously. "I want details."

"I have to go back to work," Sarah said firmly, tossing her empty drink in the trashcan and heading down the path the opposite way. "Goodbye!"

"Don't make me call him and ask for details!" Lauren hollered after her. "I'll do it!"

Sarah just waved goodbye without looking back, uncertain how she felt about the conversation that had just taken place. On the one hand, she was relieved to have been able to talk about how confused she was and not have Lauren judge her _too_ much. But on the other hand, saying it out loud had made it something real and not just something she kept in her own head, and that seemed like a dangerous path to go down.

* * *

Sarah had gotten used to a certain pattern with Matt: one step forward, ten steps back. Sometimes twenty. It had gotten to the point where anytime things were going well for too long, she started to expect something to mess things up with them. And after a such a long stretch of things going relatively well—by their standards—she had sort of been waiting for something to go wrong. At first she'd thought it would be the video with Cecilia; then she'd been certain it would be the parking garage incident. She figured _something_ had to get in their way.

So she was relieved when she got to the boxing gym for their training session and it seemed like things were still normal. Maybe they were done moving backwards. Maybe not every obstacle had to send them flying back to the beginning of the game.

That particular thought was what had distracted her long enough for Matt to hook his foot around her ankle, knocking her legs clean out from under her for what felt like the thousandth time.

"Your head is somewhere else," he noted, wiping the sweat away from his brow with his forearm. "What are you thinking about?"

"Um, you know. Just that I'm getting really good at this," she said breathlessly from her position sprawled out on the floor.

Matt laughed, offering her a hand up. "Well, you aren't getting worse."

When their time was up, Matt stood at the bench, undoing the wraps on his hands while Sarah filled up her water bottle at the fountain.

"So, have you thought more about showing me how to use those batons?" she asked as she walked over to him.

"No," he said. "But I'm a little worried you would enjoy using them too much."

Sarah rolled her eyes and flicked her water bottle at him, aiming to irritate him by hitting him with the few drops left on top.

Unfortunately, she hadn't screwed the lid on tightly, and the bottle's poorly-secured top flew off, sending half of its contents flying in Matt's direction. His shoulders arched up like a cat as the icy water hit him, soaking most of his back.

Sarah's mouth fell open and she slapped a hand over it to keep herself from laughing. The task become significantly more difficult when he turned towards her and she caught sight of the indignant look on his face.

"Are you crazy?"

"I—" Sarah dissolved into laughter at the sight. "I didn't think that would happen."

"Give me that," he said threateningly, reaching for the bottle as he approached her.

"No, I'm still drinking it," she retorted, backing away and holding it behind her, out of his reach.

"You can't be trusted with it."

"Of course I can."

A sharp grin spread across his face, a less dangerous version of the one that was often paired with a black mask. Sarah's stomach flipped, and it occurred to her that until now she had almost forgotten that being nervous could be an enjoyable sensation, an excited buzz instead of heavy dread.

Matt lunged forward, quickly catching her around the waist, and made a grab for the water bottle. Laughing, Sarah flicked the bottle again, this time hitting him squarely in the side of the face with the cold water.

"See, I was just going to take it away from you, but—"

He caught the bottle and tipped it, dumping the entirety of what was left inside directly over Sarah's head.

She shrieked as the ice-cold water soaked her hair before traveling down her spine. The sudden coolness was startling against her hot skin, immediately eliciting goosebumps, and her back hit his chest as she tried to avoid getting wet.

"It's cold!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, is it?" he said laughingly, tossing the now empty bottle aside. "I didn't notice."

Matt's own water bottle was sitting on the edge of the ring nearby, still full. She tried to snatch it, but Matt still had a grip on her waist.

"No, no, no," he said, spinning her around easily, out of reach of the bottle. "Nice try."

He deftly maneuvered her backwards, away from the ring, and before she knew it her back was pressed against the lockers.

The hands Sarah had been using to playfully push him away were now knotted slightly in the front of his shirt, wrinkling the fabric a little. She didn't let go, instead digging her fingers into the fabric a little deeper and bringing Matt a few inches closer, so that they were barely touching. He let her tug him forward without complaint, his hands landing on her hips, where he slipped his thumbs just under the hemline of her tank top to brush against her bare skin. The contact sent a spark through her, making her shiver despite the heat.

They remained that way for a moment, both of them slightly out of breath with a ghost of that sharp grin still on Matt's face, close enough that she could see the drops of water still clinging to his hair—

"So this is what your training has become, huh?" came a gruff, unfamiliar voice from behind them. "A chance to do some heavy petting with pretty women?"

The faint trace of a grin that had been lingering on Matt's face dropped away as quickly as his hands did. He whipped around to face the man speaking, but didn't move from his position directly in front of Sarah. Craning slightly to see around Matt's shoulders, Sarah caught a glimpse of him. He was older, with grey hair and dark glasses similar to Matt's. He held a long silver cane in his hand.

She knew who it was even before the name came out of Matt's mouth in a short, hostile greeting:

"Stick."

And in a moment, Sarah had a horrible feeling this was the big step back she had been able to feel coming. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will get to the backlog of comments soon, I promise! If I didn't answer your last comment, I wasn't trying to ignore you, I was just trying to get this chapter done!


	31. Revelations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, everyone! I think you will really enjoy this chapter (I hope) because I really enjoyed writing it. You get some solid Matt/Sarah scenes along with one scene from the POV of our beloved Foggy. This was originally going to be two chapters, but there were a few little things at the end I really wanted to share with you, so enjoy the extra long chapter!
> 
> Also, just to reiterate, I will not be pursuing the ninja/Hand storyline, despite Stick showing up. It was my least favorite part of Season Two. Stick might mention some mystical stuff because that's what he does, but I don't want you guys to think that's the direction this story is heading. I definitely still want to keep it grounded in Matt and Sarah and their own battles, not in the bigger picture Netflix MCU fight.
> 
> Alright, moving on. Who wants some angst! Who wants some miscommunication! Who wants some internal guilty Catholic monologuing!
> 
> Hopefully you, because this chapter has lots of it.
> 
> Happy Defenders Eve!

 

_Revelations_

Stick's sudden appearance acted as a vacuum, and any trace of the teasing tension that had hung in the air was immediately sucked away. Just a few seconds earlier, Sarah's skin had been buzzing and her nerves had been enjoyably on edge—now as she stood there with Matt, both of them still dripping with water, she inexplicably felt like a schoolchild who'd been caught doing something wrong.

The man tilted his head in her direction in a manner that was eerily similar to what Matt often did.

"This isn't the same one who was lingering on your sheets last time I came to visit," he noted.

Sarah blinked in surprise; partially at the mention of what she assumed was one of Matt's old flames and partially because—while she had gotten used to Matt being able to sense things like that—she didn't remember him mentioning that his former mentor could do it as well. It felt significantly creepier coming from this old man, and she folded her arms in front of herself uncomfortably, very aware of how her wet tank top was clinging to her skin.

"It's none of your business who I spend my time with, Stick," Matt said tightly, shifting slightly so that he was placed more firmly in between the two of them. "What are you doing here? I was pretty clear last time we spoke that I wanted you the hell out of my city."

"And I went. You didn't say anything about not coming back."

"It was implied."

"Flew right over my head," Stick said with an innocent shrug. "Not all of us got the fine education you did, Matty. What are you still pissed about anyway?"

Sarah saw Matt's fist clench at the nickname.  _Matty_. She didn't think she'd heard anyone call him that before, and made a mental note never to do so if this was who he associated it with.

"How about showing up out of nowhere after twenty years so you could mock everything about the life I've made? Then insulting my dad, lying to me about a mission, killing a  _child —_ "

"I told you already—that wasn't a child in that container," Stick explained calmly. "It wasn't even a human; it was a monster. One that needed to be taken out before it could destroy your entire precious city."

"The only monster that night was the guy who executed a kid in the name of some mystical, centuries-old war that he can never quite seem to explain," Matt said harshly.

Sarah's mouth had literally fallen open a little bit as she looked between the two men. This was  _not_  where she had expected this argument to go.

"I did what I had to do. Don't know what else you want me to say on the subject."

"And the rest of it?"

"Well…" Stick shrugged. "Don't have much to say about that either."

Sarah remembered how Matt had made some offhand joke when he was teaching her how to mediate, saying that the person who trained him was much more intimidating than he was. At the time, she had struggled to imagine someone more intimidating than the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, but now she was starting to see what he meant. Matt's was intimidating because he let his emotions get the better of him—always short-tempered and quick to throw punches. But Stick was intimidating for the opposite reason: he didn't appear to show much emotion beyond scorn as he dredged up what seemed to be a very painful history with Matt. Suddenly the blank, impassive mask that Sarah knew Matt could put on so easily made much more sense.

Stick tipped his head around, surveying the room they were in.

"I don't know what's less surprising," he said. "That you haven't found a less shitty place to do your training, or that you're so easily distracted by a girl that you didn't even hear me coming."

"No, you've been doing something…cloaking your heartbeat," Matt argued.

"And? I still take up space in the room; still displace molecules when I move. Still have a scent, and footsteps, and a temperature," Stick listed off. "If you're that reliant on heartbeats alone, then you're even farther behind than I'd thought. Maybe your focus has been elsewhere."

Sarah didn't miss the way he aimed the last part of his statement in her direction, but she only rolled her eyes. Since starting at Orion, she spent a good chunk of her day being either blatantly talked about or talked down to by various men, and at this point she barely registered it anymore; it was just background noise. Instead, her attention was on Matt, whose shoulders were rising and falling in that telltale sign that he was trying to keep his temper in check. She moved a little closer to him, so that her shoulder was brushing against his, and lightly ran her fingers down his forearm, hoping that the closeness would calm him down as it sometimes seemed to do.

He turned his head towards her, his brow knitted in confusion.

"Maybe we should go," she said softly.

"Good idea," Stick said, drawing Matt's attention back to him. "Matty, why don't you send your girlfriend safely home so we can talk properly?"

"I wasn't talking to you," Sarah replied, not looking away from Matt. He still had tension coiled tightly between his shoulder blades, practically buzzing under his skin, but his eyes—still aimed somewhere near her face although he was obviously listening to Stick—were dark and pained, and she didn't like the combination of those two things that Stick was bringing out. "Matt?"

After a beat, Matt turned his head down towards her.

"Sarah, you…you should go home," he said quietly. "I'll meet you there."

Sarah stared at Matt for a long moment, not liking the idea of leaving him alone with someone who so clearly put him on edge, but also not wanting to stick around where she obviously wasn't wanted. She looked over at Stick, whose satisfied look just made things worse, then pressed her lips together, turned on her heel, and left the gym.

* * *

Matt could tell Sarah was hurt by the dismissal, but there was no universe in which he wanted her and Stick in the same room. He had been able to hear her pulse steadily increasing behind him as he and Stick argued, and it occurred to him that hearing his mentor's doom-and-gloom warnings about impending war for the first time could be alarming. Why couldn't Stick ever pop up when Matt was alone, and preferably expecting him? Some part of him was convinced that this was his punishment for straying too close to a line he'd already determined he wouldn't cross.

"You just had to make your dramatic entrance, didn't you?" Matt said.

"I'm sorry, did I interrupt playtime for the children?" Stick asked sarcastically.

"I don't want you near her ever again," he said in a low, hard voice. "Do you understand?"

"Oh, what's the big deal? I thought it went well."

"I'm serious, Stick. This is the last time the two of you will ever be in the same room."

Unfortunately, that wasn't true.

"Sure thing, Matty," Stick agreed easily. "You have my word I won't interrupt any more of your dates."

"In case you've forgotten, your word doesn't mean much to me anymore," Matt said with a bitter, mirthless grin.

"You're really still upset about what happened last time? The Black Sky is nearly unstoppable once it's started. If I hadn't put an arrow through that thing's heart—"

Matt's fist clenched instinctively, and it didn't go unnoticed by Stick.

"He wasn't a _thing_ ," Matt snarled. "He was a child."

"What, you gonna hit me?" Stick asked, sounding deeply uninterested in the answer. "Go on, then. Kicking your ass  _has_  always been the fastest way to get you to listen."

Matt wet his lips, weighing the idea for a beat before shaking his head. "No. No, that trick isn't going to work every time. You can't just come goad me into a fight whenever you want."

"Of course I can," he said dismissively. "How else am I supposed to make sure that you're still on your toes?"

"You aren't. That's not your job anymore."

"Pathetic," Stick muttered.

He sounded more resigned than angry, and maybe that's why Matt wasn't expecting the punch that followed not a half second later. Stick's fist connected with his mouth, not hard enough to break his jaw, but with enough force to break the skin and snap Matt's head to the side. The intent was clearly to bait more than to injure, and it worked.

Matt's body seemed to move before his brain could catch up, and in a second he had seized Stick by the front of his jacket with both fists. Stick let out a short breath, and it took Matt a second to place what it was: a satisfied scoff at the younger man's reaction.

"Yeah, that was real difficult," Stick observed.

Matt tightened his grip momentarily before letting go, shoving Stick away with enough force that he stumbled. He wiped the blood away from the corner of his mouth, trying to keep his breathing regulated even as a rushing sound filled his ears. The devil inside was still screaming at him to hit the other man back, to get into another full-on brawl with him. But he wasn't going to give Stick that satisfaction.

"I'm not going to fight you, Stick," he said, drawing in a ragged breath. "Not this time. Sorry to disappoint you."

"I've gotten used to it by now," Stick said caustically.

The words cut as sharply as they had been intended too, making Matt's chest tighten, though he didn't let on beyond a twitch of his jaw.

"If you just came here to rehash the past, I'm not interested," Matt said.

"Fine. Let's talk about the present. How about your new friend?"

"No. We're not talking about Sarah."

"Yes, we are," Stick insisted calmly. "That girl is an albatross around your neck."

He stated it plainly, as though it were simply a fact.

"You have no idea what you're talking about, Stick."

"I don't? I've had my ear to the ground since before you existed, kid. And I'd heard of Orion long before it ever came to your attention."

Matt started in surprise, and Stick gave a low, derisive laugh.

"You thought I wouldn't pick up on the fact that your sweetheart is employed by a group of criminals? If she works there and she's running around with you on the side…" Stick shook his head ruefully. "Seems like a good way for her to get a bullet to the head, and quick."

Matt would have responded angrily had his brain not gotten snagged on the ugly picture that hypothetical painted. The fact that it was such a real possibility didn't help.

"I'm just trying to help her get her life back," he said.

"Ah, right. And tell me, when you set her up with this shiny new life, how long do you think it'll take before you're out of the picture?"

It was a good question, and one that Matt had asked himself before. But it felt different coming from him, worded as an inevitability rather than a depressing possibility. After all, if there was anyone who knew what it was about Matt that made people want to leave him, it was Stick.

"I don't know," he answered honestly.

"I'm not trying to sound harsh, I'm trying to make you see that you're making a mistake getting so attached to this girl," Stick said slowly and evenly, as though spelling out a school lesson for a child. "Men like you and I have to be alone to be the best at what we do."

"What  _we_  do?" Matt repeated incredulously, followed by a mirthless laugh. "No—no, don't put us in the same category. You and I don't do anything close to the same thing."

"You're right. I actually accomplish what I set out to do. You just go around aimlessly trying to push back against an endless flow of scum without killing anyone."

"I'm doing enough."

"No, you think you are. Because you're young, and you have a pretty girl to tend your wounds," Stick cooed sarcastically. "And that's blinding you to the reality of the situation. This will end in one of two ways: she will get you killed, or you'll get her killed. Hell, maybe the stars will align and it'll be both."

One of the worst things about Stick, in Matt's opinion, was his nasty habit of being right.

"That's not going to happen," he said, but he didn't sound convincing even to his own ears. "I won't let it."

"Of course not. Because you've kept total control of the situation since the beginning, right? Never slipped up?"

Unwanted, the memory of Sarah's scream coming from the other side of that windshield sprang to mind. She had brushed it off as a close call, but it had stuck with him. How could he not have sensed that she was in that car? What if he had thrown that man just a little harder? What if Sarah had been in the passenger seat instead of Jason, and taken the brunt of the man's heavy boots coming through the windshield? As it was, she had walked away with just a few scratches, but it had been so close— _too_  close—and if she'd gotten hurt worse it would have been entirely his fault.

"You can't protect her, Matty. But you'll keep trying even when you shouldn't, and that makes her a liability to you. I know it's not what you want to hear, but it's the truth."

"So, what, you've been following me around because I've dared to spend time with someone? You came all the way back to New York just to lecture me about Sarah?"

"Of course not. I came to New York on my own business."

"Which is what?"

Stick snorted. "Nothing you're ready for. Not if you're still hanging on to things that are holding you back."

"Which clearly I am. So why are you here talking to me?"

"Because I've been here in the city dealing with it for weeks now, and it seems like every time I turn around I hear about you all over the news."

"I've been in the news since I started doing this," Matt said. "It kind of comes with the territory."

"Not like this. Opinion articles, viral videos. That one reporter in particular…she's turned figuring out who you are into a game for people," Stick said. Matt worked his jaw in annoyance; of course Stick would have come across the articles Cecilia had been writing about him; they were everywhere these days. "And you've allowed it. So I came to see how you'd allowed yourself to get so sloppy. Now I know."

"In what world is Sarah responsible for other people writing articles about me?" Matt asked.

"She's not. But once one part of your life starts making you go soft, you begin letting other things slip, too. Before you know it, your mug'll be plastered all over CNN."

"Well, that's my business."

"For now it is. But fame makes for a useless soldier. I'm concerned that when the time comes for you have to face a  _real_ threat—"

"A real threat? In what world is your vague war with no one in particular more of a 'real threat' than what I deal with every night?" Matt demanded. "You've never shown me one  _shred_  of proof that your threat is real, but all I have to do is step outside to see that mine is."

"You want proof? Help me with what I'm in town working on."

"I'm not interested."

"I thought you might feel that way. Well, suit yourself. There's big stuff going down in New York soon; I'll be here a while."

"I don't want to hear your heartbeat following me around anymore."

"No point in it now that I know how poorly you pick up on it. Besides, I don't have any interest in listening in on your love life."

"Good."

"But when you change your mind, which you will…you give me a call." Stick tossed him something small, and Matt caught it. It was a burner phone that felt similar to his own, only larger and less scratched up. "I'll be around."

Matt stood and listened to the click of Stick's cane leaving the boxing gym before grabbing his bag and following suit.

* * *

The air outside was nearly as humid and heavy as the stale air inside the boxing gym, giving Matt no reprieve from the stifled feeling in his lungs. He felt keyed up, itching to knock someone's teeth out, and there was an edgy, reckless thrum to his blood. His apartment was blocks away, and he could hardly wait to change clothes and head out into the night to work off the instant, prickling anger that Stick had managed to instill in him so quickly.

The sounds of Hell's Kitchen rushed in to meet his ears, louder than usual. Normally he could block most of it out, but tonight he had been so knocked off balance that he couldn't seem to get a good grasp on what noises he was letting in.

As he turned the corner, Matt became aware of the person sitting on a nearby bench very suddenly: first by the scent of citrus mixed with sweat and water, and then by the heartbeat, quickening just a little in anticipation of what would probably be a tense conversation.

"For a second I wasn't sure if you'd notice me here," Sarah said quietly as he stopped in his tracks in front of her. His expression must have given away his mood, because her voice sounded wary, and he could feel her gaze move from his face down to his body language.

Her sudden and unexpected presence caught him off guard—he'd thought she was safe at home, far away from Stick and anything connected to him—and he reacted without thinking.

"I told you to go home," he said, the words coming out harsher than he'd intended. Sure enough, she let out a short, incredulous huff in response.

"I'm sorry, did we step into a time machine?" she asked. "I didn't think you got to order me around anymore."

"That's not—" Matt clamped his lips together, tipping his head back as he collected his thoughts. The last thing he wanted right now was a fight. Actually, that wasn't true; a fight was exactly what he was looking for. Just not with her. "That's not what I meant. I just…thought that's where you were going."

"I figured I'd wait to see if—" Sarah's breathing hitched in surprise as she came closer to him. "Jesus, Matt. What happened to your face? Did you guys get into a fight?"

"Not exactly," he said, bringing his hand up to touch the split skin near his bottom lip. He'd almost forgotten it was there.

"That's really the guy who trained you as a kid? I mean I kind of figured he was a dick, but Jesus…no wonder you're so—"

"—so what?" he cut her off, morbidly curious as to what aspects of his past and personality she thought she could analyze based off one short conversation. "Violent? Unstable?"

"…I was going to say guarded," she said slowly. "Growing up with someone like that."

"I didn't grow up with Stick," Matt countered. "Stick was there for a little while, and then he was gone. Don't act like he had some big hand in shaping who I am, I had a lot more years without him than I did with him."

Matt knew he was lashing out at her, saying things to her that he really wanted to say to Stick, and she didn't deserve it. He expected her to snap back at him angrily, so he was surprised when instead she stayed calm.

"Okay…okay, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that," she said. He could hear the concern in her voice and immediately felt guilty.

"No, don't…don't be sorry. You didn't do anything," he said, closing his eyes running both hands through his hair as he paced around. "Stick just doesn't bring out my most levelheaded side."

"Yeah, that's not super surprising," she muttered. "What happened in there?"

"You saw what happened. Snarky comments and…non-specific warnings of an oncoming war."

"Right, but I meant what happened after you dismissed me from the room like a secretary in a Mad Men episode."

"I've never seen it."

" _Matt_."

"I'm not going to apologize for not wanting the two of you anywhere near each other," Matt said flatly. "He's a dangerous person, Sarah. And I don't know if he's a threat to you, but I'm not going to risk it."

"Why would he be a threat to me?" she asked slowly. "I don't even know him."

"No, but he knows enough about you that he thinks you're a liability to me, and I wouldn't put it past him to try to do something about it." Even as he said it, he knew that he shouldn't have.

"He thinks I'm a what?" she said with a startled laugh. "Did you tell him that's crazy?"

Matt hesitated. "Not exactly."

"Why not?" she asked apprehensively. "It's not like you think that, right?"

"No, of course I don't. But he's—he's not entirely wrong," Matt said haltingly. Because maybe Stick wasn't wrong; maybe Matt was falling for someone he shouldn't, and it would end up with both of them getting hurt.

"…what?"

As soon as he heard the hurt in her voice he wished he hadn't said anything.

"I didn't mean that to sound the way it did," he tried. "Stick just has this thing about not keeping people in your life—"

"So then, is everyone in your life considered a liability, or just me?" Sarah asked.

Matt didn't say anything, which was answer enough.

"What a shocker," she whispered, turning to look away from him.

"It's not what you think."

"Of course it is, Matt. This is the same problem we've always had, it just gets recycled," she said tiredly, turning to walk away.

"No, Sarah, wait," he said, reaching for her arm to stop her, but she pointedly took a step back and out of his reach.

This was going badly. There was no way he could have this conversation with her right now, not when everything that was tumbling around his head right now was all tied up in her. And he didn't want her to see him like this, angry and on edge and lashing out at anyone near him. He needed to clear his head before he could even try to explain his complicated history with Stick to her.

The sounds of the city were getting louder and louder around him; he could barely focus past all the sirens and voices and music playing and cars screeching.

"Listen, I…I can't talk about this right now. I have to go. I'm sorry. I'll come by your place later tonight. Okay?" He reached up and hooked a few stray pieces of hair behind her ear, and she let him, which he thought was a good sign. "Please."

She didn't answer right away, and he thought she might understandably tell him not to bother.

"Okay," she said finally.

"Thank you," he said, flashing her a quick, relieved grin that she didn't return. "I'll talk to you soon."

Then he was gone, off to change into his mask so he could clear his head and free his veins of the shaky anger coursing through them.

* * *

Sarah tossed her gym bag in the corner of her living room when she got inside, then reached up and yanked at her hairtie, letting her hair fall from its ponytail. A current of agitation was buzzing under her skin, and she figured a shower might help calm her thoughts.

As she stood in the shower, letting the steam loosen her muscles, she tried to figure out what had just happened. Obviously this was why Matt had been acting so strangely lately, avoiding seeing her in person and running off to chase down something he couldn't explain to her. It made sense from what little she knew about Stick; Matt shut down completely when it came to the topic, but the few things he had told her made it very clear that their relationship was complicated at best and antagonistic at worst. If Matt had some weird parental issues with Stick, she wished he would talk to her about it. If her alcoholic father and total flake of a mother had given her anything, it was a deep understanding of having a complicated relationship with parents.

Then of course, there was the very strange encounter she and Matt had had after the gym.

"A liability," she muttered, scowling at her shampoo bottle. Some old man who she'd never met had decided she was a burden that was putting Matt at a disadvantage, and for whatever reason Matt seemed to maybe be listening to him. She took a deep breath, reminding herself of how frazzled and undone Matt had seemed after his conversation with Stick. Maybe he really had picked his words poorly. Maybe there was more to it. She could wait a few hours to find out.

She slowly turned the temperature down on the shower, letting it run colder and colder until it was almost freezing before she finally got out. The cold water on her skin helped keep out some of the heat that filled her apartment, though she knew it wouldn't help for long. After changing, she rummaged through her closet for a few minutes before finding the cheap tabletop fan she'd bought last summer when her window-mounted A/C unit had stopped working. It wasn't very strong, but it would do the trick for now.

A few minutes later, Sarah settled cross-legged on the couch and opened her laptop, curious to find out just what 'cloaking your heartbeat' entailed. Googling it would probably just come up with weird fringe sites, but it was worth a look. She clicked on her browser and frowned when it wouldn't connect to the internet. She turned her wifi off, then back on, and tried again. With a groan, she realized what day of the month it was; the payment date for her internet bill had already come and passed, and she'd been so busy she hadn't noticed. And she definitely didn't have enough money in her account to cover it at the moment.

"Fine," she grumbled, snapping her laptop closed and giving it a resentful look, as though the machine itself had been the one to budget poorly.

The lack of internet seemed fitting, however, given the large stack of paperwork she still had left to fill out for enrolling her father in his new care home soon. She put her tea kettle on the stove before grabbing the paperwork off her coffee table to start filling out the forms. It was boring, but it gave her something to focus on. After a while, she opened her laptop back up and put some music on to fill up the silence as she worked.

About halfway through the stack of papers she glanced up at the time, and was surprised to see that it had gotten late. She'd have thought Matt would have shown up by now. A small flutter of nervousness went through her, and she tried not to wonder if Matt's erratic behavior earlier had gotten him into trouble on his patrol. With a sigh, she pulled her hair up into a clip to get it off her neck and out of her face, then returned to what she was doing.

An hour of paperwork later, and she had fallen into a restless sleep against the arm rest of her couch.

* * *

Matt told himself not to take out all of his anger on the first target he came across, which ended up being a group of four lowlifes who had cornered an elderly Vietnamese man and were circling him like vultures, taunting him before robbing him. When Daredevil was done, he left seven shattered ribs, two bruised windpipes, and one broken collarbone in his wake, along with any notion of holding back that particular night.

Hours later, after he had busted his knuckles open and his lungs were burning with exhaustion, he made his way towards Sarah's apartment like he had promised. He wasn't sure what he would say to her, exactly. It didn't seem likely that she'd let him brush off what had happened at the gym, especially given that she obviously knew he and Stick had been talking about her after she left. But trying to explain what he'd said about her being a liability might lead to conversations that he definitely didn't want to have.

For a brief second, Matt honestly considered telling her the truth about everything. About Stick finding him as a child, and how Matt had been so desperate for a connection to someone that he'd driven him away. How he had come back and set Matt's life off kilter last year, and how everything the man said had the effect of confusing Matt to his core, and he was sorry that he let it affect him so much. He wondered what she would say, if she would wrap her arms around his neck and stay there until he let her go.

The rickety fire escape shook slightly as he landed on it. Sarah had her window propped open about a foot to cool her apartment down, held up by what he thought might have been a thick wooden kitchen spoon. He raised his hand to knock on the windowpane—then he hesitated, listening for a moment.

Sarah was inside her apartment, still awake. She was on her couch, and he could hear the scratch of a pen as she sifted through a stack of papers next to her. The citrus scent of her shampoo was stronger than usual, accompanied by the smell of tap water and lotion. She'd set up a small, oscillating fan on the side table next to her, and it whirred steadily as it tried to beat back some of the heat. The breeze it caused was making her hair blow into her face, and she exhaled in annoyance before sweeping her damp hair back and securing it with a plastic clip. He could hear quiet piano music coming from her laptop speakers, and the smell of green tea and honey drifted towards the window, propelled along by the fan.

He only stood there for a minute, but it was very easy to imagine that what he observed in that minute was what her normal nights were like before she met him. Calm, and safe, and wonderfully free of violence and danger. And this was what they should be like once they'd succeeded at bringing down Jason and the rest of Orion: Sarah living the life she wanted, and him not intruding on it. He had no right to ruin nights like this, to break up the scene on the other side of the glass by bringing in all of the dirt and grime and blood of his own life, weighing her down with his past and secrets.

After another moment, he quietly left the fire escape before she ever noticed he was there.

* * *

The next morning Sarah woke with a jolt, her stomach dropping as she realized she had fallen asleep on the sofa waiting for Matt and hadn't set her alarm. She scrambled around for her laptop to check the time, cursing loudly when she saw that she had overslept by a good hour and a half. She got to her feet, wincing as her neck twinged painfully in protest of the angle at which she'd fallen asleep. She hastily shoved her feet into a pair of flats and yanked a brush through the matted mess her hair had turned into after sleeping with it up in a clip, assuring herself that her boss was still on an extended break while recovering from his injuries, so maybe no one would notice she was so late.

She was already on the subway heading towards Orion when she remembered that she was supposed to have gone to Vanessa's first to pick up some documents and bring them to the bank. Swearing loudly enough that a couple of kids nearby started giggling and whispering, she got off at the first stop to switch over to the correct line. She was in such a hurry that she didn't have time to spare a thought to getting stood up the night before, save for a brief streak of irritation.

When she finally got to Vanessa's apartment building, she had to go through two different security checkpoints: the guard at the front desk who simply checked her ID and hit the button for the penthouse, and the two uniformed security details Vanessa always had posted at her door—at Wilson Fisk's specific request, if the rumors Sarah heard were correct. One looked through Sarah's bag while the other gave her a cursory pat down. She had to go through this process every time she came here, and although it only took a few seconds—neither guard seemed terribly concerned that she was a threat—she always tensed up at the thought of being touched by either of them.

Once inside, she knocked on the door to Vanessa's home office, where she could hear Vanessa quietly conversing with someone.

"Come in," Vanessa called out.

Sarah was already apologizing as she reached for the doorknob.

"I'm so sorry I'm late, I—I—I overslept and then I got on the wrong subway, but I can stay…" Sarah's words abandoned her as she entered the room and caught sight of who Vanessa had been talking to: Jason. His presence by itself wasn't that shocking—although Sarah hadn't been given any heads up that he would be returning to work that day—so much as his appearance. The windshield had cut him worse than she had realized. The number of cuts on his face had been obscured by the sheer amount of blood, but now they stood out clean and shiny against his skin, streaking across the bridge of his nose, criss-crossing in all directions over his face. The effect of the scarring combined with his signature wide smile was jarring in the most disturbing fashion. She stood there wide-eyed for a second before finishing her sentence. "…um…l-late if you…need me to."

If Jason was offended by her horrified reaction, he didn't show it.

"Sarah, hello. I stopped by on a whim to talk to Vanessa about a few things before I return to work next week," he said, before giving a quick look at his expensive watch. "I'm surprised you're just now getting here."

"It's alright," Vanessa interjected smoothly. "I've set out flex hours with Sarah. She's here within the window of time that I generally expect her. No harm done."  
This wasn't true at all. Sarah had been given a specific time to be there, and she had missed it by a significant amount. She had no idea why Vanessa was covering for her, but she wasn't complaining about Jason shifting his piercing gaze from her over to the other woman.

"I see. Well, that's very convenient," he said, then looked back at Sarah. "We were just finishing up, so I'll leave you two be. Sarah, I expect that you'll be on time on Monday when I return."

"Yes, of course," she said quickly.

When Jason and his face full of horrifying scars were gone, Sarah turned back to Vanessa awkwardly.

"Um…thanks," she said. "For the flex hours thing."

"I've had more than my share of mornings where I couldn't get out of bed," Vanessa told her. "And nothing has been ruined simply because you're late."

"Oh. Well, that—that's good," she said uncertainly.

Vanessa looked at her intently. "Tell me, how do you like working for Jason?"

"Uh, it's great," she lied.  _He never makes me watch while he murders someone with a hammer and then tells me to dispose of their body._ "It's—it's really…challenging. And I'm learning a lot of new…workplace skills."

Vanessa nodded, but didn't look as though she particularly believed her.

"Of course. And what did you do for a living before you started working at my husband's company?"

There was nothing particularly alarming about Vanessa's line of questioning, but it made Sarah uncomfortable anyway. She didn't want to talk about her past with Vanessa or anyone else associated with Orion.

"I played the piano."

"The piano?" Vanessa repeated interestedly. "You played professionally?"

"Yes."

"I tried playing the violin for the longest time, but eventually I had to admit that I had zero knack for it," she admitted with a laugh. "But I do love music. All the arts, really. I used to own an art gallery, you know."

"Really?" Sarah tried to recall if she had known that.

"Yes. Of course, I had to sell it once Wilson was sent away. People would come by just to ogle. The art become secondary to the sensationalism. But I bought a few of the pieces before I left," she said, nodding towards a large painting hanging on the wall. The bottom half of the painting was a dark, dark gray, nearly black, with a gradient of dark tendrils reaching up towards the blank white space at the top, like smoke rising into the sky.

"It's lovely," Sarah said absently. She hoped Vanessa would give her the document soon so that she could leave.

Vanessa's lips curled into a knowing smile as she gave Sarah a look. "No, it isn't. And it's not meant to be. What do you really think of it?"

Sarah looked back over at the painting, the way it stretched nearly all the way up to the ceiling, with the dark half coming well above their heads.

"It's…a little ominous."

"Yes," Vanessa agreed. "But I think there's something about it that seems...promising. A promise of change, whether good or bad."

For the life of her, Sarah could not figure out Vanessa sometimes. With Jason, she just figured he was a little insane. But Vanessa seemed grounded enough, save for when she started speaking in riddles like this.

From another room there came the sound of a baby crying.

"I should go check on him," Vanessa said, reaching into her desk and handing Sarah a manila folder. "Here you go. You can give the receipt to Jason when he returns to work."

Sarah took the folder and quickly exited, leaving Vanessa and her confusing paintings behind.

* * *

Four more days passed, and then it was Friday. Sarah was at her father's place to make dinner and help him begin packing, but he'd been napping when she arrived and she hadn't wanted to wake him. So she started cleaning the apartment, and her mind wandered to a certain vigilante who had gone totally radio silent for the last four days. The only way she knew he wasn't dead or mortally injured was by checking Twitter, where people sporadically tweeted about having witnessed Daredevil flipping across rooftops. She felt a confusing mix of annoyance and concern, and the struggle between the two—along with a good dose of useless pride—was what kept her from reaching out and calling him. But it had been nearly a week, and she wanted to know if he was okay.

Eventually, she settled on a middle ground: she would call Foggy, just to quickly check if Matt was still coming to work and acting like a normal human with everyone else, at least. But her bad luck from Monday seemed to be carrying over into the end of the week, and when she reached for her cell phone she saw that it had only 2% battery left. The stupid thing was a couple of years old, and the battery always drained quicker than she expected, so of course she had forgotten to bring her charger. She hit the Contacts button, but the effort of opening it seemed to exhaust her phone, which promptly shut off.

"I really need to start memorizing people's numbers again," she grumbled as she rummaged around in her bag for the business card she knew was floating around in there somewhere before finally procuring it:  _Nelson & Murdock: Attorneys At Law._ She dialed the number printed below their names; it was still early enough that Foggy would probably be at the office for another hour or two, and if Matt was the one who answered then at least she could tell him to stop being such a dick.

Instead of either of them, a bright female voice came on the other end of the line. "Nelson and Murdock, this is Karen."

Sarah swore silently; she'd forgotten about Karen,  _again_.

"Uh, is—is Foggy available? Foggy Nelson?" she clarified uselessly, as though there might be several people named Foggy working in their three-person office.

"No, I'm sorry, he's out right now; he should be back shortly," Karen said. "But I can give him a message if you like, and he can call you back. Are you a client? What's your name?"

"No, I'm—I'm not a client," Sarah said, hesitating as she weighed whether to tell the truth, or lie, or just hang up. "Um…this is Sarah Corrigan. We, uh…we met. That time."

_That time you got your arm broken because of me and then I pretended like I'd never met your two best friends._

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

"I remember." Karen sounded uncomfortable as Sarah felt. "…how are you?"

"I'm—I'm fine. I, uh….how's your arm?"

"It's healing."

"Right." There was another long, heavy pause. "Listen, I'm really sorry. For everything that happened that night. With your arm, and with Matt and Foggy."

"It's…it's okay, actually. Foggy explained that you and Matt have kind of a complicated thing going on, and I understand—or, I mean, I think I understand…why you didn't tell me you knew them."

Sarah had no idea what scenario Foggy had come up with to tell Karen, or if he had just left it at 'complicated,' but if it meant Karen wasn't angry at her then she supposed she should just go with it. She slowly sat down in her dad's overstuffed armchair.

"Yeah, complicated is…a good way of putting it," she agreed. "Is he there? Matt?"

"No, he's out, too. They had a lot of appointments today so they split up to cover them all."

"Oh, right," she said.

"Hey, listen, I'm sorry, too. I know our conversation over dinner was kind of strange, and I might have said some things that could be, um, misinterpreted, and…" Karen laughed, but it sounded anxious. "…it was a weird night. I was just really tired and not making a lot of sense."

Sarah felt a pang of guilt as she recalled her conversation with Karen about Wesley, and how Karen had asked her not to talk to Matt or Foggy about it. How in Sarah's desperate attempts to explain to Matt what had happened she had immediately told him what Karen had asked her not to.

"Karen—" she began, but she was cut off when she heard someone else talking to Karen in the background.

"Wait, hang on," Karen said, then her voice became muffled as she presumably covered up the mouthpiece of the phone to talk to someone. A few seconds later, her voice came back clear again. "Foggy just came in. I'll put you through to his office."

There was a staticy clicking noise as Karen put her on hold; apparently they weren't at the point in their business where they had things like hold music. A few seconds later, a familiar voice came over the line. Sarah smiled when she heard the other line pick up. She enjoyed talking to Foggy, who—unlike his sad, confusing basset hound of a law partner—was always upbeat and nice to her.

"Sarah?"

"Hi, Foggy."

"How's it going?"

"Sorry to call your office," she said instead of answering him, mostly because things were going shitty, and she didn't really feel like she should throw all that onto Foggy. "I'm at my dad's and my phone is dead. And apparently I don't memorize numbers anymore, so all I had was your business card."

"It's alright, who memorizes phone numbers anymore? I actually don't think I even know our office number by heart, now that I think about it."

"Wait, really? That's bad, Foggy," she said with a laugh.

"I know, I know. I'm working on it. So what are you calling for on this fine day? Legal advice? You're not in a jail cell somewhere, are you?"

"No, I just, um…wanted to check in and—and see how…everyone in your office is doing," she said nonchalantly. "Just…in general."

"Uh huh," he said skeptically. "The office in general? Well, I'm doing great. Been taking my multivitamins, drinking lots of water. I finally figured out how to put a password on our office wifi so that the notary public down the hall stops using it."

Sarah leaned back in the armchair and cast her eyes up towards the ceiling, realizing he was going to give her a hard time about this.

"That's great."

"And Karen's doing well," he continued. "Getting more blonde and more beautiful by the day, as hard as it is to believe."

"Right, right."

"Who else?" Foggy said, as though he were wracking his brain. Sarah pinched the bridge of her nose, wondering how much longer he would draw this out. "Uhh, we have a courier who stops by once a day, his name is Davis and I think he's having a bit of a time lately with his baby starting to teeth—"

"Foggy," Sarah complained.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Was there some other employee of Nelson and Murdock you were hoping to get updated on? You were so subtle that I might have missed it," Foggy said seriously.

"Fine. I haven't heard from Matt in a few days," she admitted. "Almost a week, actually. I just wanted to know if he's doing okay."

There was a rush of static on the other end that she assume was Foggy sighing. "Yeah, I figured you guys might be on the outs."

"Why?"

"It's not usually hard to draw a line from his mood to how things are going with you."

Sarah sighed, curling her feet up underneath her. "That seems about right. But we aren't really fighting, I don't think. He…" she hesitated, not knowing if Foggy was filled in on Stick and their history. "…he has a lot on his mind. Some of which definitely has to do with me. And he doesn't want my help with any of it, if him avoiding me is any indicator."

"Welcome to the world of knowing Matt Murdock," Foggy joked, before growing serious again. "He's always fallen into funks like this. Like he's stuck inside his own head. I've still never quite figured out how to shake him out of it. Maybe you can."

"Yeah," she said quietly. "Maybe."

"You want me to tell him you called?"

"Uh…no," she decided. "No, don't tell him. It was good talking to you, Foggy."

When she hung up, she didn't feel much better than she had before the phone call. She was glad Matt was showing up at work relatively uninjured, but it didn't help explain why he'd been avoiding her since they'd encountered Stick in the gym. And for as much as she sympathized with whatever was going on with him, she also couldn't help feeling angry, and hurt.

Maybe she had jinxed everything when she'd hoped that things were done going wrong, that they were done taking steps backwards. Whatever Powers-That-Be that enjoyed torturing her had heard that idea and immediately smacked it down in the form of a very unlikeable old man.

A few minutes later, she heard her dad's bedroom door open and he came out into the living room. He looked a little disheveled, but mostly alert.

"Sarah. I'm so sorry, honey. Did we have a dinner date tonight?"

Sarah tried to fix her expression into something happier. "No, no, it's okay. I just got here a minute ago."

"Oh, good," he said, sounding relieved.

"Come on," she said, nodding towards the kitchen and putting both the phone call and Matt out of her mind. "I brought stuff to make stir fry."

* * *

Matt entered the office just in time to hear Foggy hanging up the phone. Karen was on the other line, making an appointment with a client for next week, so Matt quietly slipped into his office as he'd been doing all week, deftly avoiding making conversation. The two of them would both probably be heading home soon, and Matt was secretly glad. Stick's surprise appearance and his subsequent fight—would he even call it a fight?—with Sarah had left him in a less than stellar mood, and he was looking forward to getting work done without having to force a cheerful demeanor.

He was brought out of his thoughts by the sound of someone lightly knocking on the open door to his office.

"What are you in here brooding about?"

Matt lifted his head towards Foggy's voice. "I'm not brooding. I'm just…sitting here."

"Yeah—alone. In the dark."

"Is it dark in here?" Matt asked, then chuckled. "Sorry."

There was a click followed by a low buzzing from above as Foggy hit the light switch on the wall. He could hear the brush of a jacket draped over Foggy's arm, the bump of his briefcase against the door frame.

"You heading out?" Matt asked.

"In a minute. I'm just waiting for Karen to get ready before we go out for dinner. Then probably some drinks. You wanna join?"

The offer was nice, but not very tempting. As wonderful as Foggy and Karen were at trying to make sure Matt didn't feel uncomfortable third wheeling with them, they were still early enough in their relationship that it was mostly impossible for them to not act cutesy around each other. And Matt didn't mind that most of the time, but he knew he wouldn't be good company to them tonight, his tense and withdrawn mood looming over their dinner like a dark cloud.

"No, I'm good, thanks. I'm just going stick around a while longer and finish this up," he answered, giving a vague wave at whatever documents were on his desk in front of him.

There was a sigh, then the sound of wood scraping against the floor as Foggy pulled out the chair on the other side of Matt's desk and dropped into it.

"Dude. Tell me what's up."

Keeping his face carefully passive, Matt asked, "What do you mean?"

"You've been seriously locked in your head this week, buddy. Not that I would categorize your usual disposition as sunny and bright, but this is beyond even normal Matt Murdock levels of gloom."

He waved his hand dismissively. "I've just been stressed out with all of these cases—"

"Bullshit. You're enjoying the case load as much as you enjoy beating people up at night. Just like you used to enjoy finals week in law school. You like that exhaustion because it makes you feel like you're getting something done." Foggy's statement was accompanied by an accusatory finger pointing in Matt's direction.

Matt raised his eyebrows at that.

"Did you get a degree in psychology that I don't know about?" he asked dryly.

"Just being friends with you is like getting a degree in psychology," Foggy shot back. "Besides, I barely managed to get a law degree as it is, there's no way I could have gotten an extra one."

"Graduating  _cum laude_  from Columbia is 'barely managing'?"

"Well, it ain't  _summa_ , that's all I'm saying. And anyway, you're deflecting. What's going on with you?"

What could he possibly say to that? He knew better than to bring up Stick. For as much as Foggy was trying to be accepting of Daredevil—and he really was trying—any mention of the past Matt had kept from him tended to immediately throw a wrench into the conversation.

"I've just got a lot on my mind," he said, settling for a vague not-quite-a-lie statement and hoping Foggy would take it.

"Huh. That's exactly what Sarah said, too."

Matt paused. "When did you see Sarah?"

"She called the office earlier."

"Is she okay?" he asked, a little alarmed that she'd called the office and not one of his cell phones.

"She's fine. Don't you think I would have started the conversation by saying she was gravely injured if that were the case?" Foggy questioned.

"Sorry. What did she say?"

"Not much. We hardly talked, really. She spoke to Karen for a little while, then—"

That caught Matt's attention. Sarah had made it clear that she was uncomfortable talking to Karen after what happened with all of them that night, and he couldn't blame her. She never brought up her theory about Karen and Wesley again after the fight they'd had, but Matt hadn't forgotten it. It sat in the back of his mind whenever he was around Karen, becoming increasingly harder to ignore as a possibility. It was also a theory he had very purposefully chosen not to share with Foggy.

"—she was talking to Karen?" Matt interrupted. "About what?"

"I can only assume about how handsome I am, and how they feel badly that you have to spend all your time being compared to me," Foggy said lightly, to which Matt rolled his eyes. "Anyway, then she talked to me about whether or not you were dead in a ditch somewhere, since apparently you've been avoiding her for a while."

"Did she sound upset?" he asked quietly.

"Mostly just tired, and worried about you. And a little confused about what she did to deserve the silent treatment," Foggy added.

Matt shifted guiltily as he fidgeted with the cord of his headphones. He knew he owed Sarah an explanation for why he hadn't come by in so long, but he had no idea what to tell her. His feelings for her had been confusing enough before Stick's appearance, and now he had no idea what to do. Stick had a nasty habit of being right about a lot of things Matt wanted him to wrong about, and he had a horrible suspicion this was one of them. Both he and Sarah were well aware of what the worst case scenario was, ending with one or both of them dead. It was the best case scenario that neither of them had really addressed: that they would succeed in getting her out from under Orion's thumb, and she would go back to her normal life, and the more they got twisted up in each other now, the more that would hurt.

"She didn't do anything. I just haven't had the chance to stop by," he lied. "You know how slammed we've been lately. And besides, I…shouldn't be spending so much time at her place anyway. This is probably a good thing."

"You know what else would be a good thing? Going to see her and telling her you've been thinking about her all week and that you'd like to get married."

Matt's eyebrows shot up and he let out a loud, surprised laugh.

"That doesn't sound extreme or anything," he said.

"Alright, fine," Foggy said. "The proposal can wait a while. You should have ample opportunity during all the time you spend together, 'working out' and whatnot. And I know you can't see my eyebrows, but just know that they are currently waggling."

Matt sighed. Clearly this wasn't a topic that Foggy was planning on dropping.

"There's nothing going on, Foggy." A week ago that wouldn't have been strictly true if the way their last training session had almost gone was any indication. But considering he hadn't seen or spoken to Sarah in days, it wasn't technically lying to say there was nothing going on right then. "Besides, weren't you the one who pointed out how messed up that would be? I think you said something about me being better off dating Wilson Fisk," Matt reminded him. It seemed like ages ago now, but he hadn't forgotten.

"First of all, to be clear: I was not encouraging you to romantically pursue Wilson Fisk, so if you decide to go that route, I want no credit for it," Foggy warned.

"Duly noted."

"And secondly, I reserve the right to change my mind when presented with new information."

Matt sighed. "Such as?"

"Well, back when I said that I kind of figured you just wanted to sleep with her."

"You think I'm going to sleep with every woman I come into contact with."

"To be fair, there is some precedent. Although—although!" Foggy clarified with another accusatory finger. "Not as much as I was once led to believe."

"Where are you going with this?" Matt asked weakly.

"Right. Okay, yes. Hooking up with a girl you used to terrorize is a messed up scenario," Foggy allowed.

Matt kept his face carefully neutral, but under his desk he flexed the hand he'd busted open earlier that week, focusing on the pain that seared across his knuckles every time he opened his palm. "Exactly. And I'm not going to. So, we're on the same page."

"The hell we are. Because that's not the scenario we're talking about anymore. If you'd gone ahead and slept with her back then, well…then that would have been pretty bad. But at this point? With the insane amount of crazy shit the two of you have gone through together? I don't think anyone could blame either of you for wanting to make some kind of connection."

"Yeah," Matt said quietly. "Maybe."

"I just think doing something would be better than hanging out in purgatory like this.

"I haven't seen you so wrapped up in something this complicated with someone since…well…you know," Foggy trailed off, clearly not wanting to stray into painful territory.

Matt did know. There was only one other person who had ever affected him so overwhelmingly before. She'd been the exact opposite of Sarah—sharp everywhere that Sarah was soft, constantly coaxing him towards darkness while Sarah tugged him away—but their effect on him was undeniably similar. And the disaster that Elektra had left in her wake had been devastating and very nearly irreparable. Matt had just barely been able to slowly piece his life back together after she left him standing alone in the foyer of Roscoe Sweeney's mansion. But wasn't that how it always went? He'd have thought that after so many people leaving—his father, Stick, Elektra, even Foggy for a brief time—that he wouldn't be so blindsided by it every single time. Maybe this time he could at least try to pull back before it happened.

"That was different."

"Of course it was. It always is," Foggy said simply. "But you care about her, Matt. It's so painfully obvious. So go talk to her, and do what you have to do to make things right."

"I'll…think about it," Matt said.

"What, you haven't thought about it enou—" Foggy stopped talking abruptly as the door to the office opened and Matt heard the click of Karen's heels on the hardwood floor. Unable to continue his interrogation, Foggy settled for heaving a dramatic sigh. "God, you're a stubborn asshole."

Matt gave a tired grin. "Admittedly."

"What are we arguing about?" Karen asked as she finished putting in one of her earrings. She was surrounded by a fresh layer of perfume and toothpaste in preparation for going out.

"Baseball," Matt quickly supplied.

"Italian food," Foggy said simultaneously.

There was an uncomfortable pause during which the obvious lie hung heavy between the three of them, waiting to be addressed or ignored.

"Right," Karen said, the cheerfulness in her voice becoming forced in the way it always did when she could tell they were keeping something from her. Matt lowered his head, a familiar sense of guilt tugging in his chest. "…controversial subjects, both of those."

The awkwardness still lingered in the air as the two of them left a few minutes later. Matt could feel Foggy giving him one last, long look before he shut the door behind him and the sound of his and Karen's voices descended the stairs.

* * *

Late that night, after Sarah's father had gone to bed, she was still awake. Her mind was preoccupied by about a dozen different things and she didn't see any point in trying to sleep. So she found herself cleaning more of the apartment as quietly as she could, trying not to wake her dad. This attempt was ruined somewhere around the middle of her doing the dishes, when a  _tap-tap-tap_  came from the glass doors leading to the balcony. The unexpected knock startled her so badly that she fumbled the soapy pan she was washing, dropping it against the counter with a loud clang. She sent a wary look down the hall, but there was no sound of movement from her dad's room; he had always been a heavy sleeper.

She made her way over to the glass doors that led out to the small balcony and hesitantly peered through the blinds. Considering this wasn't her apartment, there was a small chance that it was someone other than Matt out there.

But sure enough, she saw that familiar black silhouette on the other side of the glass. After days of complete radio silence, he'd decided to finally show up.

"You're an asshole," she informed him through the glass.

Matt didn't seem surprised by the greeting. He pressed his lips together and held his hands open in an, "I know" type gesture. When she just frowned at him, he let his hands drop and tilted his head.

"Are you going to come out here?" he asked, his voice slightly muffled by the windowpane.

She leaned against the doorframe and shrugged. "I'll come out later. How does five days from now sound?"

Even with his mask on she could see him wince at the comment.

"Do you want me to go?" he asked.

Sarah chewed her lip as she studied him for a moment, taking in the tired slump of his broad shoulders and the downturned corners of his mouth.

"No," she said finally. "But I don't want to wake up my dad. I'll meet you up on the roof."

Matt nodded, taking a step backward and out of the semi-circle of light that spilled out of the apartment onto the balcony.

Sarah slipped on a pair of flip-flops and glanced down at her pajamas—which consisted of a thin, worn t-shirt and cotton shorts covered in tiny cartoon martini glasses—and was suddenly relieved that Matt couldn't see them.

Up on the roof, the summer air was heavy and humid. She gathered her hair over her shoulder as she looked around the dark rooftop for the vigilante; she spotted him a few yards away, leaning back against the low wall that ran along the perimeter. As she got closer she saw that he had taken his mask off while he was waiting, and he was now fidgeting with it in his hands. She was glad; she didn't think she could have this conversation with him with half of his face covered.

Neither of them said anything for a moment as she came to a stop in front of him.

"I know that I said I'd come over to explain things the other night," he began quietly. "I'm sorry that I didn't, and that I disappeared for so long. I…had a lot of things to think about."

"Feel like clueing me in on what kinds of things?" she asked, already knowing he probably wouldn't. As expected, he didn't say anything. Sarah bit her lip and looked down at her feet. "Of course not. Mysterious Matt Murdock."

"I'm not trying to be mysterious. It's just that I've had all this time to get my thoughts together and I still haven't figured out what to say to you."

"You could say that you realized your old mentor is full of shit, and you've decided to stop listening to him," she suggested.

Matt laughed.

"He is full of shit," he acknowledged. "But…that doesn't mean that he's completely wrong about us. Just not in the way you think."

But Sarah shook her head. She'd also had a week to think about things, and the more she thought about it the more she was upset.

"There aren't that many ways to interpret it, are there? I'm not a lawyer, Matt, but I know what a liability is," she pointed out. "And it makes sense. That's what I've been right from the start, isn't it? The girl who you had to worry about ruining your life because I couldn't be trusted. The girl who you always have to show up and save, and—"

"—that's not what—"

"—and it's really shitty of you to wait this long to let me know that that's what I am to you. Y-you could have done it before…"  _Before I realized I had feelings for you_. "…I don't know, just before. Instead of waiting for some two hundred year old guy to show up and say what you were apparently already thinking."

"—Sarah, that's not it at all," he interrupted her forcefully. "You're thinking of your definition of a liability. The _normal_  definition. Not Stick's. He…he has his own definitions of just about everything."

Sarah resisted the urge to roll her eyes and tell him to stop making vague statements about Stick and start actually explaining. Instead, she just took a deep breath.

"So, what's his definition, then? What makes me such a horrible person to have in your life compared to everyone else?"

A conflicted look flashed across Matt's face, and he took a long time to consider his answer.

"When Stick trained me as a kid…he wanted to make me the perfect fighter," Matt said quietly, so calmly that there was no chance he wasn't working hard at it. "A soldier with—with no attachments, with no one that could be used against me. No one I'd risk myself or a mission for. And yeah, my friends fall into that category in a lot of ways, but…not like you do. Not even close. That's why you're the one singled out. The problem was never that you don't matter  _enough_."

"….Oh." Sarah suddenly found it difficult to breathe, much less come up with a response. She carefully avoided trying to read into what he'd just said, instead focusing on finding a more substantive response than 'Oh.' But as it turned out, she didn't need to, because Matt wasn't done.

"And maybe if that was the whole problem, I could ignore it, but it's not," he continued.

"What do you mean?" she asked, her voice sounding much tighter than she'd expected.

"I mean that since I met you, I've been knocking on your apartment window almost every night. At first it was to make sure you weren't turning me in, and then it was to make sure you were safe. And now I just do it because my night feels off otherwise," he said. His voice was low and halting, but he didn't stop himself. Sarah thought she might have gone crazy if he did. "Going out every night and dealing with—with murderers and rapists and traffickers, seeing what they do to the people of this city…it gets exhausting to think about, sometimes. But most nights, just—just for a small window of time, I get to not think about those things. Coming to see you at night, when I'm patrolling…being able to focus on something besides what's happening outside, it—it helps. It keeps me from getting lost too far in the dark. Even when you're sticking a needle through my skin, it's usually the best part of my night."

Sarah's heart was pounding loudly in her ears, and she wished there was something other than the faint beep of car horns and the rasp of summer crickets to help cover it. She tried to remember why she had been so angry with him when she came up here, but it was difficult when his sightless gaze was so intense and directed so accurately at her eyes that she could have sworn he could see her.

"You're not making a great case for that being a problem," she noted, taking a slow step closer.

"Right now it's not. But it will be."

"Why?"

"Because all of this that we're doing…it has an end goal. And that kind of got lost somewhere along the way, but the goal was always for you to get out of Orion and get your life back. This all has an end date.  _We_ have an end date."

Did he really think that she was just going to ditch him as soon as she was out from under Orion's thumb? After everything they'd been through, and all that he had done for her?

"That's not true," she said, but Matt just gave a wry laugh.

"Yes, it is. You can get a safe, stable life back, Sarah. A  _good_  life," he said. He gave her a crooked grin, one that she'd normally enjoy witnessing, but there was a resigned look in his eyes. "Why the hell would you want someone like me in it?"

Sarah knew exactly why, but it wasn't an explanation she could spell out in words for him. Her mind kept going to the image of Matt sitting next to her at that piano with the sunlight all around them, and that indescribable peace she'd felt. She couldn't think of any explanation she could give him that could describe that feeling, that reason why she knew she wanted him around.

Without stopping to consider it, Sarah surged up on the tips of her toes and pressed a kiss to Matt's lips. It was a quick, hesitant kiss, barely more than a brush of her lips against his, and she could tell that for all of Matt's supersenses, it had still taken him by surprise. She broke away after only a second as her own surprise at her actions caught up with her. She remained lingering a few inches away, one hand still on his chest to balance herself, waiting uncertainly as she gauged his reaction.

His dark, sightless eyes darted around her face, giving her that familiar feeling of being x-rayed. It was difficult to read much in his expression, and Sarah's face flushed as the reckless certainty she had just been feeling now wavered. What had she been thinking? She'd never really been the type to initiate a first kiss, and the best scenario to try it out in probably wasn't with the Devil of Hell's Kitchen while on her dad's rooftop—

Then Matt's hand was on the back of her neck and his mouth was pressing against her own, effectively cutting short that train of thought along with any other coherent thoughts in her head. He kissed her hard, with an intensity that made her feel dizzy, flooding her with a warmth and lightheadedness she usually associated with downing the first shot of strong alcohol. But this was better— _so_  much better—and she was certain that even through the barrier of her thin t-shirt and his thick gloves he must have been able to feel the way her entire body lit up. She slowly sank back down onto her heels, holding onto either side of Matt's neck. One of his hands slid down to her waist, sending shivers through her as he wrapped it around her side.

For her own part, she was barely able to process whether she had limbs at all, much less where they were, but she was vaguely aware of the stubble of his jaw scratching against her palms as one of her hand trailed up from his neck to cup his face. Her other hand was still pressed flush against his neck, and she could feel the pulse in his throat jumping against her fingers as fast as her own heartbeat raced loudly in her ears. He smelled like soap and sweat, and beneath that a faint trace of something metallic.

Somewhere in the very distant part of her brain that was still fully functioning there were alarm bells going off, warning that maybe this was a dangerous line for both of them to cross. She ignored them, pressing herself closer to Matt, and his grip on her waist tightened, his fingertips digging into her lower back as he tugged her hips towards him.

The sudden sharp peal of a police siren cut through the air directly below them, and Sarah broke away abruptly, startled by the noise. She peered down at the street below them as the cops slowed near the building, but they were only slowing down to proceed through the intersection. Blue and red lights illuminated the walls of the building across from them before speeding away down the street, the sounds of the sirens fading out as quickly as they had welled up.

She turned back to Matt, half expecting him to be gone. But he was still there, breathing unevenly as he took a step back from her.

"I have to leave," he said raggedly, jerking his head in the direction the cop cars had just gone and yanking his mask back on. "I'm…I'm sorry."

Sarah wasn't sure if he was apologizing for what they had just done, or for the fact that he was about to disappear on her. Either way, he was gone in a blink, off to chase whatever the cops were heading towards. She couldn't stop herself from wondering if he was following the sirens because they were headed towards something they'd need help with, or if it was just convenient for him that they were headed away from her.

* * *

On the other side of town, a very intoxicated Foggy and Karen had just stumbled into Foggy's apartment.

"I think we've gotten too old to stay out all night again," Foggy decided as he collapsed on the couch. "So much for making that a yearly tradition."

Karen laughed. "Meaning we're only a year older than we were last time, Foggy."

"A year means more at my age than it does at yours," he argued.

"We're the same age!" Karen protested, falling onto the couch next to him, where she fit neatly against his side. "Besides, we made it to the important part of the night."

"Drinking the eel?"

"Exactly. We can't give up now."

"Alright, alright. Just give me…thirty seconds to close my eyes, and I'll be fully re-energized."

"Mmm, sure," she teased him.

Foggy leaned his head back against the back of the couch, presumably to stop the room from spinning. When he opened his eyes a minute later, he saw Karen staring at nothing in particular with a look of concentration on her face. She'd been acting distracted the whole night; for the past few days, actually. Ever since she'd walked in on the tail end of Foggy and Matt's conversation about Sarah.

"You know, I thought Matt was supposed to be the taciturn one of the group," Foggy pointed out.

Karen blinked, breaking out of her daze. "Hmm?"

"You've been concentrating pretty hard on that windowpane."

"Sorry, I've just been thinking…" she trailed off.

"About anything in particular, or just general philosophizing?" Foggy prompted.

Sitting up a bit straighter, Karen fixed Foggy with a look he recognized well; it was the look she got when she wanted information, and wasn't planning on giving up until she got it. It was a look he found both very attractive and slightly frightening, and his current state of total drunkenness only heightened both of those.

"I've worked with you and Matt for a while now. We've been through a lot together. But you guys still keep secrets between the two of you. Like the other day, in Matt's office."

"Oh, that. That—that was just—" Foggy's usual ability to come up with a cover story on the spot was muddled by the alcohol he'd consumed. "It was nothing."

"Nothing involving…Sarah Corrigan?" Karen asked. Foggy wasn't sure if the drinks they'd had were making her even more laser-focused on her questions than normal or if she wasn't really as drunk as he'd thought she was.

"Well…yeah, sort of," he admitted. They'd mostly avoided the topic of Sarah, neatly stepping over the landmines of how Foggy really knew her and why Karen had thought she was being targeted that night.

"Foggy, I think…I think I know what you guys were talking about. I figured it out," she told him seriously.

"You…did?" Foggy said, surprise and dread mixing in his voice. But he tried to keep cool; maybe she was talking about something else. Even Karen had to be wrong about things sometimes. Then something occurred to him. "Wait…Sarah didn't say something to you, did she? When she called?"

He didn't think she'd purposefully say anything about Matt being Daredevil, but she'd been upset on the phone, and Karen was so good at getting things out of people—

"No—I mean, she said some things that made me kind of suspect," Karen allowed. "But I figured it out on my own. There were a lot of signs."

"There were?" he asked faintly.

"Well, yeah. I mean, the way you guys were all acting so strangely the night I met her. And the way Matt's been so weird lately—weirder than usual. It wasn't too hard to figure out the secret she's been keeping. The secret  _Matt's_ been keeping. It makes sense that he's…you know. I mean, it…it is him, right?"

Foggy wasn't sure if he was more surprised by how quickly she'd figured it out or by how calmly she was taking it. He really,  _really_ wished they were more sober for this conversation.

"Are you…angry?" he asked her uncertainly.

"Yes!" Karen exclaimed, punching Foggy not-so-lightly on the arm. "How could you guys not tell me about this? This is a huge deal."

" _Ow_. You're strong when you're drunk," he told her, rubbing his arm. She didn't look amused. "And I know, it is a big thing to keep from you. I'm sorry."

"I don't even know where to start asking questions. Does—does he have a plan of some kind for all this?"

Foggy shook his head solemnly. "Not that I can tell. I think he's just kind of working it out as he goes."  
"Oh, great. That'll turn out well. He goes on all these rants about how  _we_  need to be more careful with our cases and everything and then  _he_  goes out and—?" Karen shook her head, pushing her long blonde hair back in frustration. "I know it's not the same thing, but…Jesus. Also, he's an adult, has it not occurred to him to use some kind of… _protection_?" she asked, emphasizing the last word meaningfully.

"Well, he kind of does, but it's this flimsy stuff he gets off eBay. I keep telling him to upgrade, but he's all, 'No, it'll slow me down,' blah, blah."

"Men," Karen muttered under her breath with a roll of her eyes. "And Sarah? Is he helping her out?"

"Sarah?" Foggy repeated, caught off guard by the rapidly changing direction of her questions. "Oh. Yeah, I mean, he's trying to help her as much as he can with her whole situation. That's how their whole thing got started, actually—"

"That's how it  _began_? They didn't know each other at all first?"

"No, and it was awful. He thought she was going to use it against him, and she thought he was basically the biggest jerk in the world. Which, to be fair, he was acting like it," he said, then quickly added, "But they're good now."

"Well, I hope so," Karen said. "So, what's he going to do? I mean, is he going to stick this out?"

"It seems like it," Foggy said resignedly. "You know how Matt is. He has to do what he thinks is the right thing."

"Well, of course it's the right thing! What other option is there?"

Foggy gave her a mildly offended look; had she forgotten he and Matt were both lawyers? "I mean, there's always going through the courts—"

"No, Matt wouldn't go to court if he can handle something himself."

She let out a long exhale, staring at the window again as she processed the information. He was always impressed by how levelheaded she could be.

"You're reacting to this way more calmly than I would have called," Foggy pointed out. "Way better than I reacted."

"Really?"

" _Yeah._ Maybe it's just because I've known him longer but…God, the moment I realized it was him under that mask, I—"

"Mask?" Karen interrupted sharply. "What are you talking about?"

Foggy froze.

"I…" The pause that followed was painfully long. "…what are  _you_ talking about?"

"I was talking about Sarah being pregnant," Karen said slowly. "And Matt being the father."

"Pregnant?" Foggy exclaimed. "Sarah's not pregnant. Is she? No. She isn't. Right?"

" _What mask_ , Foggy?"

"It's—oh—it's not a mask—uh, just—"

"Holy shit," Karen whispered. Her piercing blue eyes widening as the pieces of their conversation clicked into place.

"You know, now that I think about it, Sarah  _is_ pregnant, and that is what I was talking about. I got confused," Foggy backpedaled desperately, trying to reverse his mistake.

But it was too late. The slow dawning of realization spread across Karen's face as she put two and two together, always too quick on the uptake for her own good. Her piercing blue eyes widened as she got an expression that was all too familiar to anyone who knew her: the one she made when she finally solved a puzzle.

"Holy shit," she said again, louder this time. "It's Matt.  _Matt_  is the man in the mask. It's him."

"Okay, see how that's the same phrase you used earlier?" he asked hopefully. "See how I could maybe get confused by that?"

"This isn't possible."

"Karen," Foggy tried. "We've both been drinking a lot. Like—a  _lot_. Let's—let's just have some water and go to sleep, yeah?"

"God, I'm such an idiot. How did I not figure this out before now?" she asked herself angrily.

"You're not an idiot, you're widely acknowledged to be the smartest person in our law office."

She didn't appear to hear him. "All the bruises and mysterious injuries. All those times he was late for work or didn't come with us for drinks. But he's  _blind_ , I—I don't…"

"Can we please talk about this when we're sober?" Foggy pleaded.

" _No_ ," Karen said forcefully, clambering to her feet and whirling around to face him. "We can't. You've both been lying to me this whole time. Were you ever going to tell me?"

"Matt didn't think the time was right—"

"Oh, bullshit," Karen bit out shakily. "You guys could have told me at any time, and instead you chose to keep this from me. You know, I thought you two were the only honest lawyers in New York. Obviously I was wrong." She looked around for her purse, spotting it on the floor by Foggy's desk and snatching it up. "I—I have to go home. I can't talk to you right now."

"Wait, just—hang on—"

But with the slam of the front door, Karen was already gone, and Foggy was left to register how quickly his night—and very possibly his relationship—had just gone to pieces so quickly.

 


	32. Alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, guys! I'm alive! So are Matt and Sarah! I won't give you any extensive excuses because I know a lot of you have been keeping up with my complaining down in the comments or on my FFN profile, and many of you have sent lovely message so support, which I so appreciate! Long story short: Real Life is the worst. 
> 
> Anyway, You've waited such a long time, so let's jump right in.
> 
> This chapter is a bit different in that it's almost entirely from Matt's POV (including, by mass request, his POV of their first kiss). There are still a few scenes from Sarah's eyes, obviously, but there are a few Unpleasant Conversations and I really wanted them all to be experienced through Matt. In fact, the alternate title for this chapter could just be, 'Everyone Yells At Matt and Then He Broods'. Next chapter will go back to mostly being Sarah, who is decidedly less broody, but I had fun with all of the Matt POV in this one.
> 
> (PS: Check out my FFN profile for some awesome fan drawings by lucipherer, Misery's-Toll, and mindDesco, along with some truly excellent GIFs by Salisima and WinchesterDixonBros. Please message me if you made something and I forgot to mention it here, I usually keep a list of new works but there was such a gap between chapter this time that I might have forgotten a few!)

 

Matt's kiss with Sarah was far from the most romantic setting one could think of, though it was strangely fitting for the two of them.

He was still in his Daredevil costume, a layer of sweat and dirt clinging to his skin and dried blood lining the creases of his gloves. There was a large, deep bruise radiating pain across his thigh from where he'd caught a baseball bat earlier, and he was bleeding somewhere midway down his back. They were arguing on the rooftop of her father's building, and he had just given her a series of half-assed recycled excuses for the way he'd been acting. Explanations about isolation and duty—things that Stick had drilled into his head, words that didn't feel like his own even as he said them. The only truthful things he'd said so far were his confession that she was the only bright part of his nights—something he maybe should have made sure she knew before things got this complicated—and, of course, pointing out that he was solidly a part of the life that she rightfully wanted to leave behind.

And then she'd kissed him, caught him completely off guard in that way she somehow always managed to do. All those times he'd nearly kissed her and then held back, not wanting to step over that line and ruin things, and now she'd gone and blown past it herself. When it came down to it, he knew this probably was a bad decision, and he suspected she did, too. Crossing this line would just be piling another complication on top of the already dangerous and fragile situation they were caught in. He _knew_ in the rational part of his brain that he shouldn't kiss her back, but that was so much harder to remember when she was hovering on tip toes in front of him, the warmth of her hand still splayed against his chest and the scent of her citrus shampoo saturating the heavy summer air around him.

Matt could feel her breath skating across his jaw as she waited uncertainly for what was probably only for a few seconds. He felt the tiny, nearly imperceptible shift as she started to pull away, and then before he knew what was happening his hand was on the back of her neck and he was kissing her, more roughly than he probably should have—but really, he shouldn't have been doing any of this, should he? That thought lingered somewhere in the back of his mind, vastly overshadowed by the distracting counterpoint that Sarah tasted like mint and green tea with a slight, sweet hint of honey.

His hand slid down to her waist, where the breeze drifted lazily between her skin and the thin fabric of her t-shirt, picking up all of the scents that he had grown so used to around her, but which were now a little darker and heightened by the heat that flushed through her skin.

Sarah's fingertips ghosted across his neck and jaw, her touch maddeningly light against his skin in contrast to the intensity with which she returned his kiss. Then she caught him off guard again, pressing herself closer to his chest and arching her back to seal the space between them. The last of his careful restraint dropped away, and he tightened his grip on her waist, his fingers curling into her lower back as he drew her closer to him hungrily so that her hips were flush against his own.  
At some point, the normally overwhelming noise of the city had faded to a muted thrum, drowned out by both of their heartbeats hammering in his ears, so it was especially jarring when a police siren screamed by directly underneath them, breaking them both apart.

As soon as they pulled away from each other, a low panic hit him. He'd come here to tell her they needed to take a step back, that he needed time to figure out if Stick was right about them being bad for each other. And now he'd done the one thing that was going to make that even harder on both of them.

"I have to leave," he forced out unevenly. It was a cop out. He could hear the chatter on the radios in the police cars; they were headed towards a car accident, not anything he could help with. But he needed to extract himself from this situation, and he knew that was the easiest excuse, as shitty as it was.

The city was uncharacteristically quiet that night, offering Matt no opportunities for distraction from his own thoughts, so he soon gave up and made his way home. For obvious reasons, he found it difficult to fall asleep that night, his mind preoccupied with countless questions. But for all of the guilt and complexity that surrounded what had just happened, the main thing that stuck with him when he finally drifted off was the memory of Sarah pressed tightly against him, and the overwhelming feeling of rightness that had come along with it.

* * *

Matt woke very suddenly the next morning, and it took him a few frazzled seconds to piece together that there was someone banging on his front door. He stumbled out of bed, his muscles protesting at the much quicker rise than usual, and he tried to get a better feel of his surroundings as he made his way out of his bedroom. It wasn't until he was almost to the door that he picked up on Karen's perfume on the other side.

"Karen?" he asked. His voice was still scratchy from sleep, and laced with alarm. Why was she here pounding so frantically on his front door at…whatever time of the morning it was? He assumed it was early; it felt like he'd barely gotten any sleep. "What're you doing here?"

He stepped aside to let her in. As she brushed past him he picked up on a heavy layer of alcohol on her breath, and he recalled that she and Foggy had made plans to go out the night before. Had something happened? Why wasn't Foggy with her?

Karen's heels clicked against the hardwood as she marched straight down the hall and into his living room. Then she stopped and turned slowly in a circle, surveying his apartment.

"Karen, _what's wrong_?" he asked. "Are you hurt?"

She let out a shaky breath, turning to face him. He got the distinct impression that she was bracing herself for something.

"Do you keep it here? Or do you store it somewhere else?" she asked.

"…what?" he asked groggily. He wished he'd thought to grab his glasses from his nightstand, feeling suddenly exposed without them.

"The mask. The suit, the—the whole _costume_ ," Karen said. On the surface her voice was calm and insistent, but there was a shakiness underneath that seemed to reverberate through her whole body. "Do you keep it here?"

Matt's mind went blank. So many times he had thought about telling her and wondered how she would react if she found out on her own, but now that it had actually happened he was frozen.

"I…Karen…" Matt stammered. "I don't—"

"I swear to God, Matt, if you're about to say you don't know what I'm talking about I will scream."

"…I don't know what to say to you," he finished. It was lame and unhelpful, but it was honest, at least. "How—how did you find out?"

"Foggy."

The name crashed into him, knocking the wind out of his chest. Matt knew Foggy wasn't crazy about Daredevil—or about having to keep it a secret—but he had never thought he'd actually turn around and tell Karen. At least not without giving him some warning.

"Were you two ever going to tell me? Or was this going to stay a boys club secret forever?" Karen asked. The hurt that was starting to seep into her tone made Matt feel sick. It would hurt less if she was just angry at him, or disgusted—but he'd hurt her by keeping it a secret, and this was his reminder.

"It wasn't like that," he tried to explain. "Foggy found out by accident, it wasn't something that I chose to tell him and not you."

"But you did both make the choice to keep me in the dark."

"...no. _I_ made that choice," he said. It was important that she got that distinction, that _he_ did this and not Foggy. "Foggy wanted to tell you from the moment he found out, and I…I asked him not to. I'm so sorry, Karen."

Karen stepped closer to him. Her posture was tense, and her arms were crossed tightly in front of her, guarded and on edge.

"Are you really blind? Or is that just a cover for what you do?"

Matt had assumed she would ask that, but it stung all the same. He hated she would jump to the same conclusion as Foggy—that Matt had been playing a victim for all the time he knew them. He was a liar, yes. That much he couldn't exactly deny. And he'd obviously concealed the extent of his other senses. But to pretend to be blind as a cover, or to get sympathy from people? That was a different level of sociopathy that he hadn't quite reached.

"I am blind," he said. "Completely. No light perception."

"So how do you do it?"

"It's…complicated," he hedged.

"Then dumb it down for me," she said icily.

He turned away from her, putting a few steps between them and raking a hand through his hair as he decided where to start.

"I wasn't lying to you, that night we first met. When you stayed at my apartment," he said. He remembered sitting on his couch with her, both of them drenched from the rain as he tried to figure her out. "I did lose my eyesight in an accident when I was nine. And all of my other senses got stronger when I lost my sight."

"How much stronger?"

Matt hesitated. He didn't want to bring up the heartbeat thing yet—it understandably seemed to alarm people that he could hear something so intimate, and Karen was obviously already feeling violated right about now.

"A lot stronger. I can…smell if someone had coffee with their breakfast two days ago. Or hear if a baby is crying a few buildings down. I can feel when the temperature changes by a degree, or the electricity in the air when the street lights come on a night."

He was careful not to use any examples that pertained to Karen specifically, recalling how strongly Foggy had recoiled from him when he'd confessed just how much of everyone's lives and bodies he could read.

"You saved me that night," Karen said. He couldn't read her tone, which fell somewhere between betrayed and overwhelmed. "You followed me right from this apartment to mine."

Part of him was hopeful at that—he'd saved her, that had to count for _something_ , some small step towards being forgiven—but he knew better.

"I heard you leave in the middle of the night," he said. "I just didn't want you to get hurt."

Karen laughed bitterly.

"No, Matt. You didn't want me to get injured. You don't give a damn if I get hurt."

"That's not true," he countered. " _All_ I care about is that the people I love don't get hurt."

"Well, you know what hurts? Finding out that the two people closest to me don't trust me." Karen's voice wavered near the end of her sentence.

"Of course I trust you—" he began.

"Then why didn't you tell me?" she exclaimed. "You had so many opportunities—so many conversations where I looked like a fool talking about what a hero I thought Daredevil was, when he was sitting right next to me, lying to me every day."

"I thought the less you knew, and the more distance I put between you and that side of my life, the safer you would be—"

"Oh, don't give me that bullshit. This wasn't about protecting me. You don't seem to have a problem with Foggy knowing, or Sarah," she said. Matt started at the mention of her name, and as usual, Karen caught it. "She does know. Right? That's why she was so weird and secretive about knowing you. And why she didn't freak out about that cop attacking me."

Matt would have thought by now he'd stop being so surprised by Karen's unnerving tendency to figure these things out.

"She does know," he acknowledged. "But…again, it wasn't on purpose. She just figured it out."

"Right. Your friend who works at Orion just coincidentally figured out your identity. I—I talked to her about personal things, Matt," Karen said. If it was possible, she sounded even more stressed than she had a minute ago. "Who is she really?"

"She's…just Sarah," he said slowly.

"But she's involved in…whatever you're doing, isn't she?"

"For right now."

"You can't do that, Matt. Y-you can't just bring innocent people into whatever dangerous things you're doing. It gets them killed."

"I'm not going to let anything happen to Sarah."

"It's easy to _say_ you won't let anything happen, to think that you're being careful, and then the next thing you know you're standing at a funeral wondering how you let this happen—"

Karen's voice broke off as she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth.

Matt paused, giving her a moment to get her breath back.

"…are you sure we're still talking about me and Sarah?" he asked softly.

"Yes," Karen said, but her heartbeat skipped. He knew she was probably thinking of Ben right now; he and Foggy had never quite been able to convince her that Ben's death wasn't her fault. But he didn't bring it up, or mention any other secrets Karen might be keeping to herself. Whatever she'd been carrying with her for months now, there was no way he could call her out on it right now without being a hypocrite.

He spoke as calmly as he could despite his pounding pulse, hoping to diffuse the situation. "I know this is a lot to process, and that you might not approve of what I'm doing—"

"I have no problem with what Daredevil is doing. I think I've made that clear. Hell, maybe more people should be fighting that hard," Karen said. "It's not Daredevil I'm pissed at, it's Matt Murdock."

Matt paused. What could he even say to argue that?

"I…can't blame you for that."

Karen shouldered her purse, which she had angrily tossed on the chair upon entering. "I'm going to go. I need to wrap my mind around all this."

Matt stood with his head bowed and his hands on his hips, listening to her walk away.

When she reached the front door, he called after her, "Karen. I…I really am sorry."

Karen's silence was telling.

"I wish I knew if you meant that," she said finally. Then there was the sound of the door shutting, and Matt was left still half-stunned in his living room. On the other side of his bedroom door, he heard his phone ringing.

 _"Foggy. Foggy. Foggy,_ " the automated voice announced. Matt strode over to the phone and fumbled with the screen to answer it, but his hands were shaking and he couldn't get the screen to recognize his gesture. It went to voicemail.

 _"You have five missed calls from: Foggy Nelson,"_ the voice informed him in her stilted tone. He must have slept right through the first four calls.

Matt resisted the urge to fling his phone at the wall in frustration, instead tossing it on the bed where it landed on the soft sheets with an muffled, unsatisfying thump. It was probably best that he wait a few minutes to cool down before calling Foggy back, so he left the phone there and went to take a shower, dread and anger still coursing through him.

* * *

Across town, Sarah woke up much more peacefully than Matt had. Her eyes opened before her alarm went off, and she had a full fifteen seconds of sleepy contentment before she remembered what had happened the night before.

_Oh, goddammit._

She had kissed Matt. Of all the ways she could have responded to that conversation, she had chosen to kiss him. And worse still, he had very much kissed her back. If he'd pulled away, told her that he wasn't interested? She could have handled that. She knew he wasn't the type to hold it over her head, and they could have both just pretended like it hadn't happened.

But instead he'd responded in kind, kissing her with a bruising intensity that had left her lips swollen afterwards.

And then run off. Probably to avoid her for another, like an asshole.

Grumbling, she felt for her phone on her nightstand so she could text Lauren.

 _'Call me if you get a minute? I need to vent,'_ she typed out. She hit send, then as an afterthought she added, _'It's Leonard-related, so don't be judgy.'_

Her phone rang roughly ten seconds after she sent the second text.

"I'm never judgy," Lauren greeted her. "How dare you?"

Sarah ignored her. "I wasn't sure if you'd be up this early."

"Oh, I don't sleep anymore. Sleep is a precious memory from my distant past," Lauren informed her matter-of-factly. "But right now Greg is giving Noah a bath, and I'm dying to talk about something to do with grown-ups. Because lately all I get to talk about is which diaper delivery services are a scam and which nursing techniques are best and I think. I might. Explode."

"Oh. Um…well, I don't know if this counts as grown-up. Think more…middle school drama?"

"I'll take it," Lauren said immediately. "What happened?"

Sarah stared at her ceiling, figuring she'd jump right into it. "I kissed him. Up on my dad's roof."

"Why do you sound so miserable about it?" Lauren asked. Then she inhaled sharply. "Oh, my god, you pushed him off the roof."

"What? No," Sarah said, squeezing her eyes closed. The last thing she need right now was to be reminded of her horribly embarrassing date with Todd.

"Oh. Okay, good. Sorry. So, you kissed him, and then…"

"He ran away."

"What?"

"He just…backflipped off the roof and went running off. He acted like he was chasing down some sirens, but I think he just wanted to leave."

" _What?_ " Lauren said again, even more incredulously this time. "Who runs away after a kiss? Unless it was really bad. And you're not a bad kisser. _I've_ kissed you. You're a great kisser."

 _"I know,"_ Sarah said indignantly. "I'm not worried about that. The kiss itself was…" Her mind flashed to Matt's hands on her waist and in her hair, insistently pulling her closer to him. She cleared her throat "…it—it was fine. I'm more worried that I crossed a line and now he's going to avoid me even more than he already was."

"He's been avoiding you?"

It occurred to Sarah that she hadn't actually filled Lauren in on what had been going on. She tried explaining it, leaving the part about Stick and where they had run into him deliberately vague and focusing instead on what he had said to her on the roof.

When she was done, there was ominous silence on the other end of the line.

"So…just to recap: Dude wouldn't talk to you for like a week, and then showed up just to tell you that you're a big problem because he _cares_ about you too much?" Lauren said, sounding about as far from impressed as one could get. "And then you responded by…kissing him? _Sarah_."

Sarah winced. Lauren was only voicing the very same things Sarah had just been so irritated about, but it sounded worse coming from her. "Well, when you put it like that it sounds…"

"Like he's being confusing and manipulative?"

"You said you wouldn't be judgy," she reminded Lauren.

"Well, obviously I lied. I'm constantly judging. You know this."

"Alright, I'll give you confusing," Sarah conceded. She supposed 'confusing' was part of the package when you got involved with an affection-starved vigilante with anger problems. "But as for the other part…I think it's more that _he's_ being manipulated by this old mentor of his, and it's just sort of…just getting passed along to me. I'm worried about him. I mean, I'm _pissed_ at him for being an idiot, but I'm also worried. It's…it's a weird combination."

"You are so much more understanding than I would be in your shoes."

"You should have seen him when this guy showed up, Lauren," Sarah insisted. "It was like he was freaking out and shutting down simultaneously."

"Oh, good," Lauren said. "It's great to hear that the vigilante my best friend is kissing has become _more_ unstable."

"Lauren."

"Okay, sorry. It sounds to me like he's freaking out because he already thinks you're going to do the sane thing and leave him in the dust at some point, and now someone else is there reinforcing that idea. The liability thing seems like as lame an excuse as any to push you away first."

"I'm _not_ going to leave him in the dust, though."

"Well, I know that. And you know that. Does he know that?"

"Yeah," Sarah said uncertainly. "He knows."

"Because you've told him?"

"…no." She had at one point promised him she wouldn't bail, but then she'd immediately broken that promise. And she'd never specified that it extended to beyond their shared Orion goal. "But, I mean, he…knows."

"Because he's psychic?" Lauren asked sarcastically. Then she paused. "Wait, _is_ he—"

"He's not psychic."

"Oh, thank God. Listen, I don't pretend to understand what your dynamic is with him. But I do know that you _suck_ at communicating."

"Hey," Sarah said, mildly offended. "I…don't," she countered lamely.

"You do. You keep all of your feelings close to the chest and expect other people to just figure them out. And if I had to take a wild guess—like, _really_ go out on a limb and assume something—I don't think the freaking Devil of Hell's Kitchen is excellent at talking about his feelings either. So if you're going to go around kissing the guy, maybe you should use your words to talk to him first."

Sarah was even more annoyed when she realized that Lauren was probably right.

"Yeah. I guess—" Sarah was suddenly interrupted by a loud, piercing beeping sound. It took her a moment to realize that it was the smoke alarm in the kitchen going off. "Shit. I gotta go."

She hung up before Lauren could reply, scrambling out of bed and whipping her door open. To her relief, the hallway was not full of smoke like she'd been expecting. But there was a definite haze in the air, and it got a little thicker as she got closer to the kitchen. She spotted the culprit as soon as she entered the room: an unidentifiable object smoldering in the toaster oven.

Sarah unplugged the toaster oven and opened the kitchen window, then grabbed a dish towel and waved it under the smoke alarm to clear the air. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to have any effect on the ear piercing sound coming from the device. With a frustrated groan, she climbed up onto the kitchen counter, kneeling there as she reached up and fiddled with the buttons on the alarm until it went silent.

She heard the shuffle of her dad's slippers on the linoleum as he came into the kitchen. It occurred to her how much she hated that sound; her dad had always been sure-footed, and she'd always been able to recognize the sound of his heavy footsteps growing up. Now it was like he could barely lift each foot to get through the day.

"What's going on?" he asked her. "Is something on fire?"

"Uh…I don't know," she said. "Did you put something in the toaster oven?"

"I…think put in a few leftover slices of pizza," he said, sounding uncertain. "But it was just a moment ago."

Sarah glanced at the smoldering mess in the toaster oven. The inside of the door and all of the walls were charred, and the lump in the center wasn't even identifiable as pizza. There was no way he'd put it in there just a few minutes ago.

"Okay," she said, alarmed that he had set a fire and it was only by chance that he hadn't been alone. She opened the door to the fridge and looked inside. "Okay, well maybe let's have cereal or something instead? I'll take the toaster oven and get rid of it for you—"

"I know how to use a damn toaster," he snapped. "I'm not a child."

Sarah stared at him, still taken aback by his occasional—but steadily more frequent—emotional outbursts, which were so unlike the real him.

"I know," she said softly. "But this one's all burnt out now."

"If you're taking that one, I'll buy a new one," he said resolutely. Something about the situation had set him off, and he had a determined air to him as he left the kitchen.

"What? I don't know if that's a good idea," Sarah began, before she heard the sound of the front door opening. With a sinking sensation, she realized he literally meant he was going to buy one right now. She slammed the refrigerator door shut and hurried after him. "Wait, Dad, you can't—"

"I'm going to the store and I'm buying a new toaster oven," Mitch repeated. He was already making his way down the front steps.

Biting back a sigh, Sarah grabbed Mitch's house keys and her wallet from the side table next to the door and followed him, quickly locking the door behind her. She was grateful that at least he no longer had his own car keys.

"Do you want me to drive you?" she asked.

"Nope. Fresh air is good for the soul."

"…okay," she said, resigned to going with him.

So they walked down the sidewalk together, Sarah in her stupid martini pajamas and cheap flip flops, with her hair still bedraggled; Mitch in his sweatpants and tattered Knicks sweatshirt with his slippers scuffing on the pavement. They drew the occasional funny look from people they passed by. Sarah glared at each one until they looked away. This was New York City, she _knew_ this wasn't the weirdest thing these people had seen this week.

After about ten minutes, her dad's determined pace slowed to something more uncertain, and he paused at a small intersection for a long time. She watched him, fairly certain he had forgotten when they were out here. Finally she touched his arm, drawing his attention back to her.

"Do you want to go home now?" she asked him gently.

He gave her a guarded, speculative look. "You know where I live? Have you been there?"

Sarah's heart twisted, and for a moment she honestly didn't know if she had it in her to answer.

"Yeah," she said, offering him a tight smile. "I, um…I've been there."

After a moment's hesitation, Mitch nodded. "Alright, then."

As they slowly made there way home, Sarah couldn't shake the feeling that she was walking next to a stranger, and she wondered if her father felt the same way.

* * *

The second round of Matt's fights that weekend began a few hours later, with Foggy standing in the center of Matt's living room while Matt paced restlessly around the space.

"What the hell happened, Foggy?" Matt demanded. He kept his voice low, not wanting to let his anger get the best of him. And in truth, he was only about thirty percent angry at Foggy—the other seventy percent was reserved for being angry at himself—so shouting wouldn't make him feel any better.

"We were drunk. Really, really drunk. And there was some…miscommunication," Foggy said. It sounded like he was choosing his words carefully. "I thought she had already figured it out. I'm sorry, Matt."

"A miscomm—what kind of miscommunication could possibly lead to that?" Matt exclaimed.

"One of absurd sitcom proportions, believe me. One second she was just asking about you and Sarah—" Matt tilted his head sharply at that. Why did Sarah keep coming up in all this? She and Karen had barely even met. "—and the next thing I know I've just said _one_ wrong thing and she's latched onto it and is firing questions at me and…it got out of control. She's smart. She figured it out pretty fast once the suspicion was there."

"Goddammit," Matt muttered, continuing to restlessly move around the room with his hands on his hips.

"I tried to call you and warn you."

Matt scoffed. "So that I could lock the door and not let her in? It wouldn't chance the fact that she knows."

Foggy's shoulders tensed defensively. "I get that you're pissed, Matt, but you can't pretend like this is all my fault. You're the one who made the choice to go fight crime in a ninja costume and keep it a secret from your friends."

A sharp jab of guilt went through him, accompanied by a healthy dose of frustration. How many times did they have to go through this same argument?

"I thought that we had moved past that," Matt said slowly, still struggling to stay calm. "You said you were okay with what I do."

"I am. I was. I…it's not that easy. It's not the kind of thing I can just make a one-time decision to be okay with and that's it. I have to _keep_ deciding to be okay with it, over and over again," Foggy said, suddenly sounding very tired. "And some days that's easier than others. But today it's damn near impossible."

"Well, Karen doesn't seem to be crazy about it either, so you two can agree on that."

"Sure, if she starts speaking to me again at some point."

Matt stopped pacing, pausing next to the staircase and turning his head towards Foggy.

"…what do you mean?" Matt said, faltering.

"You can't really be surprised that she's not talking to me. In case you've forgotten, _I_ had to keep your secret from her, too. And she's really not happy about it, so best case scenario is she'll break up with me. Or maybe she already has broken up with me. I can't quite tell by the deafening silence whenever I try to call her. And worst case scenario is she'll decide to have us both disbarred and tossed in prison. But hey, at least maybe we'll get to be roommates again," he said bitterly.

Matt hesitated. Now that Foggy had brought up the subject, he had to ask. "You don't really think she'd tell anyone?"

"You have to be kidding me. That's the first question on your mind?"

"If she told anyone she wouldn't just be putting us in danger, she'd be endangering herself as well," Matt insisted.

"And I'm sure she knows that. You think that your friends don't understand the consequences of your decisions, but we _do_ ," Foggy said. He tiredly rubbed his hand over his face. "Maybe better than you do."

Matt had been so carefully trying to keep a lid on his temper. He took a few deep breaths, but it wasn't helping. Of course he understood the consequences—did Foggy really think he didn't spend half his time trying to make sure none of what he did would ever blow back onto the people he loved? But despite all of that planning and worrying, they had all gotten hurt anyway.

" _Goddammit_ ," he swore again, pinching the bridge of his nose. How had he let this happen? How had he somehow ruined not just his friendship with Karen, but Foggy and Karen's relationship as well?

Rage and helplessness coursed through him, aimed at Stick and at himself and at this whole situation he'd put himself in, which was surely going to end with him losing the few people he had kept in his life. Impulsively, he lashed out, forgetting for just a split second where he was and who he was with as he sent his fist sailing into the railing of the stairs next to him. The banister was made of cheaper wood than he'd realized, and the force of the punch sent splinters of it flying off with a loud _snap_.

The pain of the wood cutting deep into his hand provided an instant, illogical rush of relief—if only for a second before what he'd just done caught up with him. He heard Foggy's heartbeat pick up in alarm across the room. With a sinking sensation he realized that he'd picked the very worst moment to slip up and let Foggy witness a tiny glimpse of the devil, that side of Matt that his friend wasn't ever supposed to have to deal with.

Matt exhaled jaggedly, shame flooding through him.

"I'm sorry," he said immediately. "Foggy, I didn't—"

"Save it. If you're going to start punching things then this conversation isn't going anywhere."

"No, I wasn't—" Matt tried, but Foggy was already walking away.

"I'm not trying to have this argument with your Mr. Hyde persona, Matt," Foggy cut him off. It was a small relief that he sounded angry rather than afraid. "I'll bring my work home and stay away from the office for a few days. We have a ton of cases to deal with, in case you haven't noticed. And I can't focus on helping our clients if I'm trying to deal with you, too."

"No, don't…don't do that," Matt said. He suddenly felt very exhausted. " _I'll_ work from home for a week, or—or more, if you need. You stay at the office. Karen too, if she wants to be there. You two can…have some space to work things out without me in the way."

Foggy was quiet for a long moment.

"Yeah," he agreed finally, and Matt winced internally. "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea."

Then he left even quicker than Karen had, slamming the door behind him before Matt could say anything else, leaving him standing there like an idiot with his now-throbbing hand dripping blood all over the floor.

Matt stood very still for several minutes, getting his breathing under control. Then very slowly, he walked over to the closet where his combat outfit was hidden and popped the trunk open. He used the hand that wasn't bleeding to dig under the black shirt and pants, feeling around until his fingers closed around a flip phone—a little larger than his own burner, with scratches from previous use. He knew there was only one number saved in it: Stick's.

He weighed it in his hand for a moment, debating. He was itching for a chance to distract himself from everything going on in his life right now, anything to focus on besides the messes he'd created with every person that mattered to him. Stick had given him the phone and told him to call once he was ready to put some distance between himself and the people in his life. Which he wasn't, but his friends had made it clear that Stick had been right: his presence in their lives was a detriment, ruining not just his relationships with them but their relationships with each other.

That still left one person. Sarah flashed through his mind for a moment, but what he'd said the other night still stood. She had a better life waiting for her, and he would only bring disaster to it.

He flipped the phone open and hit the call button.

* * *

The next day was Sunday, and Sarah needed a distraction from all the worries chasing each other around in her thoughts: her dad and his declining heath; Matt and his infuriating complications; Jason and Vanessa and McDermott's mother and a dozen other things all fighting for a place at the front of the line. She was just grumbling to herself about no longer being able to fall back on alcohol when it occurred to her that she had another option open to her now, which she hadn't had for a long time: the piano.

After such a long time of not playing, Sarah missed how quickly and wonderfully practicing the piano could pull all of the thoughts from her mind and store them away where they couldn't bother her, at least for a while. She was able to focus all of her attention on the repetition of the piece she was working on, playing small snippets again and again until she figured them out. There was one song in particular that Allison had requested on her list that Sarah suspected would prove particularly frustrating, and that worked perfectly for what she needed.

She opened her desk drawer and retrieved the folder full of sheet music she had stored there, then checked the time. Father Lantom had promised that it was fine for her to practice while there were services going on, and that the sound of the piano wouldn't travel from the music room to the chapel, but it still made Sarah nervous, having not quite gotten past the feeling of intruding somewhere she didn't belong. But it was late enough in the morning that early service should be about to end, and she'd be sneaking in through the back door anyway, so she hopefully wouldn't be disturbing anyone.

So she grabbed her purse and her keys, patting the outside pocket of her bag to make sure she had her pepper spray, and left for the church.

* * *

Matt had heard the piano music as soon as he got within a block of the church.

It was late on Sunday morning, a good bit after the early morning Mass had finished but well before the afternoon one began. Ideally, Father Lantom would have preferred that Matt come to one or the other. And Matt tried, but more often he ended up feeling most welcome in the church when it was empty of other parishioners. It seemed as though Sarah had had the same idea, and the sound of her practicing floated through the walls of the church. She was working through some song a section at a time, and the sound of it was repetitive but far from unpleasant.

He'd sat near the back, not wanting to disturb the two other people who were also there by themselves, murmuring prayers that Matt carefully blocked out. Father Lantom had found him soon after, and they'd had exactly the conversation Matt had expected: he told the priest about how he'd ruined things for his friends, how he was afraid of ruining things for Sarah the same way. And in return, Lantom had advised him yet again that cutting out the people around him would do everyone more harm than good. It was what Matt had figured he would say—and something he had told him in past conversations as well—but he still couldn't quite accept it. For all his wisdom, Father Lantom could only advise what he thought was morally right for Matt, not what was logically best for Sarah's safety or Foggy's career or Karen's trust.

They sat together in silence for a while. It wasn't unusual for them, and Matt liked that the Father didn't always feel the need to fill the silences. Eventually, Father Lantom excused himself to go work on writing his service for the next day.

"I'll stay here for a few more minutes," Matt said.

"Of course," Father Lantom said. "I hope to see you back here again soon, Matthew. Perhaps with a little less weight on your shoulders."

Once he was alone (it seemed the two other parishioners had left while he and Father Lantom were talking) Matt sat in the pew, trying to gather his thoughts. But it was difficult when he could still hear distant piano music through the walls, and—if he listened more closely—the occasional mumbling about some note or section.

Sarah must have been practicing for a while before he got there, because it was only a few minutes after Father Lantom left him that he heard her stop playing and begin gathering her things. Then he heard Father Lantom's voice as the two of them crossed paths in the hallway.

 _"Good morning,"_ Father Lantom greeted Sarah. " _Finishing up?"_

He heard her hum affirmatively. _"After a while it starts to get difficult to hear where you're improving and where your ear has just gotten used to the mistakes you're making, so…I think I'm done for the day."_

_"Is everything working out for you? Is there anything you need in there?"_

_"Oh, no, it's perfect. Thanks again for letting me use it. I'm really lucky Matt found me a place,"_ she said. As soon as she said his name, Matt had a feeling Father Lantom was going to send her out here to run into him.

Sure enough, he heard the priest reply, _"You know, I actually just finished talking with Matthew. He's probably still out there if you'd like to catch up to him."_

He supposed he had time to get up and leave, but they had to have this conversation at some point. And besides, he couldn't pretend that he didn't want to see her, even if the encounter was probably going to be unpleasant.

 _"Oh,"_ he heard Sarah say in surprise. Maybe she would be the one to avoid him, now that he thought about it. _"Actually, I have been meaning to talk to him. Um, thanks,"_

A few moments later the side door to the chapel opened. Matt tilted his head, listening to the tentative approach of Sarah's footsteps echoing around the empty church as she drew nearer, coming to a stop in the aisle at the end of his pew. Her heartbeat was light and nervous.

"Hey," he greeted her.

"Hi." He heard her hair being swept out of her face and over her shoulder, the shifting of her weight from one foot to the other. "Your priest told me you were out here. I was just practicing."

Matt cracked a small smile and nodded. "I could hear you."

He felt her attention catch on him a little more; even after countless instances of him hearing her from far away, she still always seemed surprised. She shook her head.

"If I had known I was providing a soundtrack for your confessional, I'd have played something more dramatic," she told him.

Her voice was light, but he could feel her studying him, and the tension in her muscles radiated concern. He was very aware that although he couldn't see it himself, he more than likely looked wrecked, with his glasses never seeming to quite fully obscure his dark undereye circles from others and his posture slumped exhaustedly in the pew, his hands looped around his cane, which sat between his knees.

"It wasn't officially confession," he said. He slid down on the pew to make space for her, and she slipped in, resting her bag on the floor next to her feet. "Just a conversation. I had a rough weekend. Coming here usually helps me figure things out."

She started to say something, then turned her head more sharply towards him as her attention was diverted.

"What did you do to your hand?" she asked. She reached out to touch it, faltered midway, and dropped it to her side again. "It…looks like it hurt," she said hesitantly.

Matt had forgotten about the open skin that split across his knuckles. He'd gotten used to the protection that his thick gloves offered, and punching the banister with his bare hand had left it ridiculously swollen and raw.

"It was supposed to," he said truthfully, then carefully shifted his hands on his cane so that his knuckles were less visible.

Sarah was less than amused by the dark humor.

"Right. Um…so, not to make everything about myself, but I really hope all this…Catholic sadness isn't because of, you know…me," she said falteringly.

Had he been in a better mood, Matt would have laughed at her awkward broaching of the subject.

"It's not," he said. Sarah's hum in response was heavy with skepticism, so he offered her what he hoped was a reassuring smile, although it faded after a second. He hadn't really been planning to tell her, at least not while they had their own troubles to worry about. But he didn't want her thinking he was this miserable because of her, and what could it hurt to let her know what was going on? "It's really not you, Sarah. I swear. It's just that…well, Karen found out. About what I do. That's all."

Sarah turned her head sharply to look at him.

"What? Holy shit," she said. Matt raised his eyebrows at her with a small smirk. "Sorry," she whispered guiltily, craning her neck to glance up at the ceiling of the church.

"This place has heard worse," he said with a shrug.

"How did she take it?"

"Well, she didn't have me arrested or disbarred, so…it could have gone worse. But she's understandably upset about being kept in the dark. And she's angry with Foggy for being a part of that. So Foggy's mad at me for asking him to lie for me."

When he said it out loud, it all sounded very childish. He'd lied to his friends and now everyone was mad and no one was talking to each other.

"I'm sorry," Sarah said quietly.

Matt shook his head. "It's no one's fault but my own."

He heard her breathing skip as she started to say something and then swallowed her own words, settling for an unhappy hum instead. He would have bet a good amount of money that she had been about to bring up her suspicions about Karen again, and he was glad she didn't. He didn't want to get into that subject with her again right now, not with so much else going on.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I'll be working from home for a while," he said. "Steering clear of the office to give them space to…figure things out."

"That seems like a good idea. Give them some time, then see where you stand with them."

Matt was silent for a moment, letting her words sink in. She was being ridiculously kind to listen to his problems when they had so many of their own going on, caused almost exclusively by him. He knew she hadn't sat down next to him to talk about Foggy and Karen. He leaned back against the pew next to her, bracing himself mentally for the talk he knew they had to have. She'd left a careful amount of space between the two of them when she sat down, but he could still feel the warmth of her radiating towards him.

"And what about you?" he asked quietly. "Where do I stand with you?"

He didn't get an answer from her right away. She breathed in, and he could tell from the slight movement of her head that she was letting her eyes travel around the church. Her fingers were idly tracing the grain of the wood on the pew between them, and he focused on the sound of them while he waited for her to gather her thoughts.

Finally she let out a long exhale, the exhausted and exasperated sound serving as answer enough.

The corners of Matt's mouth curled into a wry, unsurprised grin.

"That's pretty much what I figured," he said.

"I don't know, I'm mad at you, I guess? You ignored me for a week and only showed up to tell me how much of a liability I am, so…I'm mostly just kind of mad at you," she said. Interestingly, she sounded more tired and uncertain than she did angry. "And I realize that maybe kissing you wasn't the most obvious way of expressing that, but to be clear, I'm definitely mad at you."

Matt breathed in, letting the familiar scent of pine and incense fill his lungs.

"I know. I don't blame you, I've been…" _Selfish, reckless, a general asshole._

Sarah breathed out something just pale of a laugh. "Some word you can't say in a church?"

"Yeah."

"Can we do this somewhere else? Like…outside? Someplace where I can use profanity and not have a giant Jesus staring at me for our whole conversation," she said, gesturing towards the front of the church, where Matt assume a crucifix hung on the wall behind the pulpit.

As soon as she finished speaking, the large front doors of the church opened, and four sets of footsteps entered the church. Two heavier pairs and two lighter, faster pairs: probably a family. One of the children was rapidly telling a story to his sibling while the parents half-heartedly shushed them.

"Good idea," he agreed.

So they ended up outside in the small courtyard behind the church. Matt had been out here a few times before; he liked how there was usually no one around, and the walls that extended around the enclosure provided a barrier between the distractions of the city on the other side.

Sarah's body language mirrored Karen's from their conversation the day before: arms crossed, tension in her muscles as she restlessly paced around, her sandals kicking up small clouds of dust. She still seemed to be gathering her thoughts, so Matt figured he would start. He had a pretty good idea of where the conversation was headed, anyway, so there was no point in dancing around it.

"Look, I know I…didn't handle things with Stick the right way. I shouldn't have avoided you, and I could have done a much better job of explaining the liability thing. I wasn't trying to—"

"That's not why I'm mad," she interrupted him. "I mean, that doesn't help, but…that part I can get over. I've never heard you refer to yourself as a soldier, Matt. Or about completing your—your _missions,_ or any of that. It didn't sound like you. It sounded like Stick. Or at least what I know about him. And I get that. People…people can get in your head."

Matt tilted his head uncertainly. "So, what are you mad about?"

"But the part after that, about how…we shouldn't bother getting close to each other because we have an _end date?_ That was messed up. I know I'm not the best person in the world, but I thought you had a higher opinion of me than that."

"You lost me. What are you talking about?"

"You really think I'm going to drop you the second I'm out of Orion? Like you're a bodyguard I hired?"

It hadn't really occurred to him that she would be offended by that. It had been their original plan, after all.

"I didn't say that," he said.

"What, then?"

Matt opened and closed his mouth, trying to come up with a way to rephrase it that might make her less angry. It clearly wasn't working, if the thrum of her pulse was any indication. Whatever softness she'd had in her voice in the church was gone now, chased away by his inability to be honest with her. No wonder his friends were mad at him, when he constantly made it so easy to be.

"Is…is this whole thing because of Stick?" she asked. "Something he said to you?"

"No," Matt said tiredly. "Not…not really." That was half-true, at least. Stick might have pushed it over the edge when he showed up and was immediately able to tell that Sarah was in a category of her own, but the idea that their closeness might be a bad thing for her had been lingering in his mind for a while now. And ever since the parking garage he had been very aware of how badly he was failing to keep her safe, too distracted by pushing their boundaries. "It's been on my mind already. The number of times you've been in danger lately. How you keep having to interrupt other things in your life to come help me. It's…all the kind of stuff you should be able to leave behind. And continuing down the path we're on is going to make it a lot harder to do that when this comes to an end."

"So…what are you suggesting?"

"That maybe…we should take a step back," he said carefully. "From this."

"A step back," she repeated dully.

"Focusing on getting you out of that place, on keeping you out of the line of fire, and less on…everything else. The personal side," he said.

Sarah was quiet for a beat, and when she spoke her voice was tight.

"Didn't we already try that?" she asked. "It ended with me getting my throat cut."

Matt's jaw clenched at the reminder. As though he didn't think of that night constantly.

"This is different."  
"How?"

"I'm not doing it over voicemail, for one," he snapped. Sarah flinched, and he immediately felt guilty. He knew that she felt bad about that; about bailing on him shortly after promising him that she wouldn't, and for not doing it in person. But she'd apologized, and it wasn't like he didn't understand why she had cut things off. Generally people didn't enjoy being yelled at in a hospital room. He softened his voice a little. "And it's…it's not like we're cutting things off. Not like that time. I'd still come by to see what information you have. And you know I'd be there if you were in danger."

He could hear the catch of Sarah's teeth across her lower lip, a nervous habit she had that always distracted him.

"No."

Matt took his attention away from her mouth and cocked his head in confusion.

"Uh…no?" he clarified. "You _don't_ think I'd be there if you were in danger?"

"No, as in…I don't want to do this—this whole 'one step forward, ten steps back' thing anymore. Things start to go well, and then one of us screws up and we're weird and distant for a while, and then something bad happens and we…fall back together. Again. Like a cycle. It's confusing, and it _hurts_ , and I don't want to be moving backwards with you. Not after everything we've gone through to get here. I can't do that push and pull anymore. So if you want to do things Stick's way, then do it properly. If you're going to take a step back, then you…you have to step _all_ the way back. Completely. No coming by, no checking up on me."

It occurred to Matt—as a sharp, incredulous laugh left his lips—that maybe laughing at her wasn't the smartest move at the moment, but what she was suggesting was so absurd that he couldn't help it.

"What, you want me to just leave you to deal with escaping a criminal organization on your own?" he asked sarcastically.

"Obviously not! But if it's between that or having you be only halfway there, then…yeah."

It took him a second to realize she was serious.

"Are you crazy? I would never do that to you. Come on, Sarah, you _know_ I wouldn't do that to you," he said, his frustration lacing his words. "I'm not doing this to try to put you in _more_ danger. Can you give me some credit for—for half a second that I'm trying to do the right thing here?"

"I don't care! That's not—you don't get to do that!" she exclaimed. "Y—you don't get to do this half-assed thing where you won't talk to me but you're still lurking around in the shadows. What, you can stand on a random rooftop somewhere anytime you want and check in on me, maybe drop by my window to do shop talk every now and then, but otherwise I don't get to know if you're dead or alive unless I see it on Twitter? That seems really fair," she said. Matt opened his mouth to argue, but she cut him off. "And _don't_ pretend like you're not going to be constantly eavesdropping on me, because we both know you will."

"Maybe it doesn't seem fair. But it's safer for you, and…easier. For both of us."

"Easier," Sarah echoed, barely above a whisper. "Okay."

"Sarah…"

"This is kind of embarrassing," she said, letting out a shaky laugh. Her skin was flushed now. "You're totally wrecked about your friends wanting some space from you, and here I am trying so hard to keep you around…and you're not interested." She brought her hands to her face for a moment, then dropped them. "This was a mistake. I'm going to go."

She turned to leave the courtyard. The smart thing would have been to let her leave, to make this the jumping off point of them stepping back from each other. But yet again, the rational part of his brain didn't seem to be communicating with the rest of him, and before he knew it he had caught her lightly by both of her upper arms, halting her in place and stepping closer to her. She could easily have broken away from the loose grip, and he'd have let her. But instead she stayed still, her head tilted up to look at him and her breathing uneven, although he didn't know if it was from anger or from the sudden proximity, or maybe a mixture of both.

"Listen to me. _Please_ ," he said very quietly, lightly squeezing her arms. "I've just had two people I care about tell me _exactly_ how much I've screwed up their lives. Their relationships, their trust, nearly their careers and their freedom if things had gone just a little bit wrong. I bring… _misery_ to the people around me. Just like…" _Like Stick always told me would happen. "_ …just like I've always been warned it would go. And if I've ruined things for them so badly, I can only imagine how much worse it would be with you." He slid his hand up to hook her hair over her ear, knowing it was much too intimate of a touch considering the point he had just tried make, but doing it all the same. "The amount of pain I could bring to your life, after I've already hurt you _more_ than enough. When you finally get your old life back, I don't want to poison it."

Her pulse was skyrocketing, but when she spoke she sounded surprisingly calm. Much more so than a minute before.

"Matt…you know I'm never going to get my old life back," she said softly.  
Matt frowned. He knew they hadn't been making progress with Orion as fast as either of them hoped, but he didn't think she'd given up yet.

"Don't say that."

"No, it's true. It…it doesn't work that way. I'm not the same person I was before. You know?" she said. Matt swallowed, nodding tightly. He hadn't known her pre-Orion, but he'd gotten flashes of what she had been like, and he knew she was different now. She had a lot more locks on her door for one, and a lot more scars on her skin for another. "When I got stuck in that place I lost so many pieces of myself. Pieces I thought I would never get back, but I did. Mostly thanks to you," she pointed out, and Matt's chest twisted because even if he wasn't sure he could really believe that, he could tell that she did. "But I'm still different, and even if I wasn't, everything else didn't just freeze when got trapped at Orion. I can't just step back into my old life, because it's…it's not even there anymore. I have to make a new one. And there'll be space for you in it, if you'd stop being such a dick."

Her words—with perhaps the exception of the ending—hit Matt much harder than she seemed to realize. He'd thought they were essentially on the same page as far as his being in her life went. He was someone she allowed to stick around despite his near constant screw ups, but never as any kind of permanent presence in her life. He'd probably made more mistakes with her than with everyone else in his life combined, and for some reason she was telling him that she wanted him to stay. It suddenly made it much harder to remember why he was so convinced he should leave.

He gave a jerky nod, swallowing and taking a step back to put some more space between them. It was difficult to think straight with her clouding his senses. He could feel Sarah's eyes on him in the long silence that stretched between them.

"You're not exactly making this easy," he said finally.

"Neither are you. I never thought I'd say this, but I kind of miss Bossy Matt. Usually you're always just… _around_ , getting in my business and—and listening to my heartbeat, and telling me what to do, and it's annoying because you're smart and most of the time you make sense," she said. Matt had no idea where she was going with this. "But right now you just got cut off from your friends, and a creepy old man has been telling you that you deserve to be alone, and I think it's messing with your judgment. It's making you be the…distant, passive avoid-y guy. So now _I_ have to be the bossy one and make the dramatic speeches, and I don't like that and I'm not as good at it as you are, so can't we just..."

She trailed off uncertainly with a vague, exasperated gesture of her hands, and Matt raised his eyebrows at her.

"Go back to normal?" he finished for her. "Would that be the normal we had before the other night, or after?"

Sarah faltered, her skin flushing with warmth again as she gauged his meaning. Somewhere beneath all of the exhaustion and misery of the last few days, there was still a small part of him that enjoyed that she got flustered at the mention of their kiss.

"Right. I might have…crossed out of the 'normal' zone," she admitted.

"We both did."

"I don't know…where we stand with that," she said hesitantly. "But…we could figure it out. Take our time."

"You really think it's that simple?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said. "Risk it. You risk jumping off buildings every night, you could risk…just sticking around. It's not like it could be more complicated than what we've already dealt with. And if you really, honestly think the best thing for both of us is to avoid each other, then I guess I can't stop you. But if you change your mind…my window's open."

Then for the third time that weekend, Matt was left standing alone, but this time feeling noticeably different from the first two.

* * *

At work on Monday, Sarah was preoccupied by another problem besides whatever was going on with her and Matt: the photographs of Mrs. McDermott that were still sitting in the bottom drawer of her desk. And more urgently, the woman herself and how to get her to stop her awareness campaign about her son before it got her killed. The thought stressed her out for her entire work day, and then well past when she clocked out. It felt like there was a ticking clock on figuring this out, and Sarah was singularly responsible for doing so.

The subway arrived at her usual stop, the one that would drop her off a short distance from her apartment. Normally she would hurry to get off before the doors closed, but her body seemed to make a decision before her mind did, and she remained in her seat as the subway pulled away.

It was three more stops and a transfer to another subway before she reached the stop for the fifteenth police precinct.

She slipped on her largest pair of sunglasses as she exited the subway, feeling very much like the caricature of a spy that Foggy had once described her as. Coming up the stairs to the street level, she spotted the police precinct down the block and kept her head down as she walked towards it. She was careful to skirt a wide distance around where McDermott's mother was out front passing out photos of her son, instead going one block down to the opposite entrance.

Once inside, Sarah took off her sunglasses and was relieved to see that the police officer she had been looking for was yet again at the front desk. She walked up to Officer Mahoney, who looked up from his computer screen as she approached.

"Um. Hi," she said. Now that she was here, her heart was hammering and she was desperately wishing she'd put some more thought into this first, instead of just acting on guilt and sympathy. "I—I don't know if you remember me."

"I do," Mahoney said. His eyes briefly flicked down to her throat, where the scar from Ronan's knife was still lightly visible, but not noticeable if you didn't know to look. Sarah stiffened a bit, resisting the urge to move her hair in front of it. "Hope you're doing better than the last time I saw you."

"I am," she said automatically, then she remembered her cover for coming here and backtracked. "I mean, I'm…a little better. But not great. And you, um…you told me that I could contact you, if I needed directing towards some…resources. For dealing with everything."

Sarah felt a little guilty about lying, but there was enough truth to it that she could look past it. She probably really did need a therapist or a support group or whatever pamphlets Mahoney was going to give her. She just had no actual intention of going to them.

Mahoney seemed unsurprised by her request, simply nodding and reaching over to open the small gate that separated the lobby from the bullpen.

"Of course. Just follow me, we have a list of some places we can direct you to," he said.

Sarah followed him over to a filing cabinet, where he started flipping through a drawer full of several folders. She was just trying to think of way to bring up Mrs. McDermott in a non-suspicious way when a godsend came by in the form of a mildly irritated-looking policeman arriving with two cups of coffee in his hands. A glance at his nametag revealed him to be Officer Alvarez.

"She's still out there," Alvarez said, setting one of the cups of coffee in front of Mahoney, who didn't need to ask who he was talking about. "What does she think we're doing in here, sitting on our asses playing Angry Birds?"

"I hear you," Mahoney agreed with far less conviction. If anything, he just sounded exhausted by the topic. "She just wants to make sure we're doing right by her son."

"Right. I'll tell you what she wants," Alvarez said, leaning forward a little and lowering his voice. "She wants those survivor benefits. You know McDermott was always bitching about having to support her because she can't hold a job. And with the amount of her annual income that he was providing, she's entitled to a good chunk of money each month if his body turns up."

"I might remind you that there's a civilian present," Mahoney said, but his reproving tone was half-hearted. "And we have no reason to think it'll end up that way."

Officer Alvarez gave Sarah a cursory glance, but didn't seem terribly worried. For her part, Sarah tried to look disinterested in the conversation, and not at all as though she was hanging onto every word. And definitely not as though she was feeling ill at the thought that this woman's financial livelihood seemed to hinge on the discovery of a body that Sarah had personally ensured wouldn't be found.

"When people go missing in this city, they never just show up on a beach in Cabo. Especially not people who really should have been caught up in that FBI sweep last year," Alvarez said with a shrug. "That's all I'm saying,"

Sarah was impressed by the man's complete lack of a filter in front of a total stranger.

"Alright. Thanks for the coffee," Mahoney said with a tight-lipped smile. His colleague nodded and swiftly left.

"Was he talking about the woman outside? With all the signs?" Sarah asked.

"Mhm," Mahoney confirmed. "Aaron McDermott's mother. The detective from our precinct that went missing. She doesn't think we're doing enough to find him."

"I'm sure you are," Sarah said. There was that automatic politeness again; she had no clue if they were or weren't working hard to find him. If anything, the fact that she hadn't yet been arrested would indicate that maybe they weren't.

"We set up a tip line, but not much has come of it. Just the usual calls."

"What do you mean?"

"You know. He got abducted by aliens, the Zodiac Killer got him, he was really D.B. Cooper," Mahoney listed off. "Got a lot of weirdos in this city, and somehow they always find the tip line."

"Oh. Well, um…I hope you have more luck soon," she said. It sounded lame to her own ears, but maybe that was just because she knew it wasn't entirely sincere.

"We will," Mahoney said. Something in his tone made her glance over at him, but he was still focused on the folders he was flipping through. He finally pulled out a printed sheet of local therapists and clinics, along with a couple of brightly colored pamphlets, which he held out to her. She saw a few fragments about trauma recovery and community violence statistics as she reached out to take the papers. "Here you go."

"Thank you."

"It's interesting you showed up today," Mahoney said. "I was trying for a while to figure out why you looked familiar when I took your information outside of your building. And it came to me that you're one of Nelson and Murdock's clients. You came in here to talk to McDermott once, right?"

It was only from constantly working under Jason's scrutinizing gaze that Sarah didn't visibly freeze at the mention. Instead she looked up from the pamphlets and met Mahoney's eyes. His expression was calm and non-accusatory, but was clearly paying close attention to her reaction.

"Uh…yeah. He asked me a c-couple of questions about a break-in at my work," Sarah said. She cursed the tiny stutter that slipped into her voice. "I don't think I was much help, so he didn't call me in again."

"You know, it was McDermott's partner Donovan who came to your rescue that night. Did you know that?" Mahoney said.

 _Actually, it was Matt who came to my rescue, and Donovan who was helping try to hurt me,_ Sarah thought.

"The night's kind of a blur. I wasn't really focused on him," she said, gesturing towards her throat. That part was true, at least.

"Of course," Mahoney said. He nodded towards the papers in her hands. "I hope you find what you were looking for in there."

Sarah swallowed, nodding. "Thanks."

Then she walked out of the precinct, careful not to look like she was rushing away. She shoved the papers inside her purse once she was outside, taking a deep breath of fresh air before walking down the block to take the subway back home.

* * *

Once back at her apartment, Sarah's mind was buzzing with what she'd learned at the police precinct. It sounded as though McDermott had been an extremely unpopular in his department, to the point of some officers not seeming terribly preoccupied with the idea of finding him. So she had some small vindication, at least, that he really had been as corrupt and dirty as she'd known him to be, despite his outwardly friendly demeanor. But it didn't really matter anymore what kind of a man McDermott had been; he was no longer here. His mother, on the other hand, still was. And that was what was truly bothering her.

Did Mrs. McDermott know what her son's colleagues had thought of him? Could she sense the general indifference in their department towards his disappearance? She knew she should be relieved that no one but maybe Mahoney was looking into things closely enough to find any sort of link to her, but instead she just felt guilty. Her thoughts kept floating back to what Alvarez had said about the survivor's benefits. Sarah hadn't gotten the impression during her short encounter with Mrs. McDermott that she was after money; she'd genuinely seemed like a distraught mother searching for the truth. But if getting that money would make her stop publicly asking questions about her son…

Sarah was pulled from her thoughts when she heard a knock. She looked over at the open window to see Matt outside, one hand resting on each side of the frame. It was remarkable that he was almost always able to land so silently on a fire escape that otherwise scraped and complained if too many leaves landed on it.

She cocked her head at him suspiciously, noting how uncanny it was that every time she stepped foot in that goddamn police precinct, Matt Murdock magically appeared soon after.

"You know, when you said your window would be open, I didn't realize you meant… _literally_ open for anyone to come inside," he noted, tapping a gloved finger against the windowsill. He made no move to climb through, instead lingering outside. Sarah tried not to take that as a bad sign.

She leaned against the inside of the window frame, watching him. Of course he couldn't just properly come out with whatever he'd come here to say. Instead they had to dance around it for a while, as though she wasn't about to burst into a million pieces in anticipation.

"It's about ninety degrees in my apartment. And I don't think anyone else is crazy enough to climb up that thing," she said, throwing a skeptic glance at the rickety metal structure. As if on cue, it gave an ominous creak, but Matt seemed unconcerned. "It could literally fall to pieces any day now."

Matt tilted his head back for a few moments, possibly listening to the structure swaying above him, or maybe just thinking—it's not like it was ever easy to tell with him. Then he focused back on her, leaning forward into the window and wetting his lip.

"I'll take the risk," he said carefully. "If that's still an option."

Sarah blinked, realizing he was probably no longer talking about the fire escape.

"Oh," she said intelligently. "You're…you're sure about that?"

"Are you?"

"Yeah," she said without hesitation.

"Then so am I," he said simply.

"What about Stick?"

"He…won't be an issue," Matt said. It was a vague answer, but it at least meant he'd be trying not to let the man get in his head so much.

She smiled at him, fully for the first time in a while, and however Matt was able to pick up on these things he did, matching her smile with a crooked grin of his own.

"Okay. I, um—okay. Good," she said. Apparently she had used up the majority of her vocabulary while yelling at him in a church courtyard. She saw Matt's lips twitch under his mask. "Are you…coming in?"

Matt shook his head. "Not tonight. There's…something I have to go take care of first."

A mixture of disappointment and relief swept through her. It was probably a good thing he wasn't in coming in right now; things between them had been so intense and emotionally exhausting lately—or was it always?—that she wasn't sure her stress level could handle having him in her apartment right now. She had no clue where they were headed now that things were out in the open between them, and she really wasn't feeling up to figuring it out tonight. Tonight she just wanted to decompress. But she also couldn't ignore the feeling that he was going to disappear on her again.

"Right," she said, trying to sound casual. "Um, okay. I'll just see you…soon, then?"

"Actually…" Matt began. Her heart dropped a little. _Actually, Sarah, emotions make my skin crawl so I'm going to take another month to decide how I feel if that's okay with you_. "Now that my apartment is going to be functioning as my office for a while, I'll probably be looking for reasons to leave whenever I can. Maybe…we could have lunch tomorrow?"

 _Oh_.

"Yeah," she said immediately, before realizing that wasn't necessarily a promise she could keep. "I mean, hopefully. I don't always get a lunch break. But if I do, then I'll be there."

"Alright. I'll see you then," Matt said. He started to push away from the window, then paused. "And Sarah?"

"Yeah?"

He tapped the glass of the window above their heads. "Don't go to sleep with this open."

Sarah laughed and rolled her eyes, but it was difficult to pretend to be annoyed with him when she couldn't keep her grin from widening.

"That's more like it," she said softly, and Matt grinned at her before heaving himself over the railing and onto a nearby ledge, then out of her sight and into the shadows of Hell's Kitchen.

* * *

When Matt got to his apartment, Stick was already waiting inside. He yanked his mask off his head as he descended the stairs from his roof, déjà vu settling over him. How many times would have to come down this staircase ready for a fight with this man?

"Now, this is really unbelievable," Stick said by way of greeting. He had already helped himself to one of the beers in Matt's fridge and was sipping it from the armchair closest to the window. "Do I smell a _third_ woman in here? The first two weren't enough trouble?"

It was true that the scent of Karen's perfume combined with cheap alcohol was still lingering in the air, though no one but the two men present would be able to pick up on it. As much as it made Matt's blood boil to hear Stick mention one of his friends, he knew by now that telling him something was none of his business was useless, so he kept silent.

"Whoever she was, she might want to lay off the drinking," Stick said. "I saw you called. I take it you finally cut the cord with your friends and your pretty sparring partner?"

"No. Not quite."

At least, that was what he hoped. Things were bad with Foggy and Karen right now, but maybe he could still salvage it. He needed to try, at least, after he gave them some time. And Sarah…he had no idea what they were to each other right now, but she'd said she was with him, and if he owed her anything by this point it was trusting what she said.

Stick sighed. "I told you to contact me when you'd decided to get rid of the things that are holding you back."

"I know."

"Then why are you wasting my time?"

"Because you need my help with whatever shit you're involved in. And I'm willing to offer it, as long as you do something for me in exchange," Matt said.

"How magnanimous of you," Stick said dryly. "What are your terms?"

"I'll help you find the people you're looking for. And if you want to fight them, we'll fight them. But I won't kill anyone. And I'll do everything in my power to make sure you don't kill anyone, either," he added. He thought of the child in that shipping container and how hard he'd tried to save him, only to have Stick snuff his life out the moment Matt's back was turned.

"So you'll be just as much of a hindrance as a help," Stick said with a derisive snort. "Fine. And what do you get out of it?"

Matt paused. Every molecule in his body was screaming not to let this man back into his life, where he could mess with his head and manipulate him so easily. But for as dangerous as Stick was, he was also undeniably useful.

"You said that you'd heard of Orion. That you'd heard of them long before I ever did."

Stick nodded slowly. "That's true. I've heard of most things long before you have."

"If I help you, you give me all of the information you have on them. And if I need you to back me up going in there, you show up."

"Deal," Stick said with a shrug. It made sense; Matt had never known him to be reluctant when it came to joining in a fight.

"I'm not finished. You don't go anywhere near Sarah," Matt said. This was the important part, the part he wasn't sure Stick would agree to. He and Sarah were barely chipping away at the armor around Orion, and any help Stick could offer him would be valuable, but not at the risk that he'd be putting Sarah in even more danger. "Alright? You don't contact her, you don't show up unexpectedly when we're together. If you want to get in touch with me, you can do it when I'm alone. There's no reason for her to know you're even still around."

Stick heaved a deep, long-suffering sigh. "You know, at some point you're going to need to get your priorities in order, Matty."  
"I have. I don't care about your mystic war, Stick. I really don't. But you can help me protect what I do care about. That's why I'm offering you this deal. You can take it or leave it."

There was a span of silence, then the clink of a beer bottle being set down and the scrape of Stick's cane against the floor as he stood up from his chair.

"Whatever you say, kid," Stick said, which Matt recognized as his own dismissive way of agreeing to the terms. "Keep your phone on you. I'll be in touch when I need you."

Stick's footsteps barely made a sound as he exited the apartment, leaving an exhausted Matt to sink down in his armchair and breathe a sigh of relief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone's still out there, let me know what you thought! I missed all of you (and Matt and Sarah) so much! Happy Holidays, y'all!


	33. Good Days, Bad Days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends! It's been a long time, but here we are! Before we begin this HUGE MONSTROSITY of a chapter, I have a few notes about the story that—as always—you can feel free to skip.
> 
> 1) I finally sat down and organized all of the plot points I still have left and the rough number of chapters each one will take to cover, so after a million people asking me how many chapters this story will have, I can finally provide a (sort of) answer! My estimate is that the story will be wrapped up in about 7 to 8 more chapters after this one, ending right around Chapter 40-ish (plus an epilogue). Of course, I often start writing a chapter and it ends up being so long that I have to split it into two, so give me some leeway of a few chapters in there.
> 
> 2) Lots of people have been asking about a sequel! I would love to do one. However, this story was a huge project that took up a lot of time, and I don't think I have the energy or free time to do another one like it. So my plan is to write the sequel as a sort of collection of one-shots covering various moments in Matt and Sarah's relationship. It would be very similar to this story but without the overarching plot to tie it all together—instead focusing on the two of them during various big events in both their relationship (birthdays, big fights, holidays, etc.) and in the MCU (like meeting Elektra/The Defenders etc). That format feels like a lot less pressure, but I can still keep Matt and Sarah around to write about.
> 
> 3) Another thing people have been asking me is if there will be an M-rated scene before the story is over, and the answer is yes! In fact, one is already written. However, I'm going to keep this story T-rated because it reaches a wider audience that way, and I know that not all of my readers are interested in reading smut. So the version included in this story will be T-rated, ending just before The Scene, and if you'd prefer to read the full chapter in all of its glory, I'll have it posted as a separate one-shot.
> 
> (4) I will be without my laptop for about a week and I really rushed to post this before I leave. It's about 4:30am here right now and I have to catch a train at 7, so in exchange for my sleep deprivation please forgive any egregious typos or messy sections. I'll go back and polish it up when I get the chance! I will still have my phone to read reviews, which I swear on Jack Murdock's grave I will be better at replying to this chapter.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all like the chapter. It's SO LONG and that's even after cutting three whole scenes and chopping Matt's one measly POV scene down to almost nothing. There is one scene that actually has some…almost…fluff? Because these two kids deserve some fun. I think you'll enjoy the lightheartedness, but if it feels like a trap it's only because it is.

 

At one point in her life, Sarah's definition of a good or bad day had been fairly tame. A good day would have been one in which she actually got to work on time, and maybe got to go out with friends for drinks afterwards. A bad one would have involved ending up on the subway car that smelled like old vomit, or getting yelled at by a street preacher.

But that had been a long time ago, and now her good days and bad days—especially the bad days—were much more pronounced. This was especially obvious in the week following her reconciliation with Matt.

The best day of that particular week was Wednesday, which ended with Sarah kissing her local vigilante in the middle of his kitchen.

The worst day was probably very next one, when she found herself looking down the barrel of a gun aimed directly at her face.

But before any of that happened, she started her week off on Monday with surprisingly high spirits.

Jason was in Chicago all week for meetings, so Sarah had a few days reprieve from his piercing stare and strange conversations. He was all the more unnerving now that his face was deeply scarred, and he'd been treating her with suspicion ever since the parking garage incident. So getting a break from his overbearing presence was enough to put Sarah in a good mood to begin her week.

The fact that she had plans to meet with Matt for lunch that day—not to exchange information about secret dealings or to stitch up open wounds, but just to eat food and talk like normal people—didn't hurt her mood, either.

Of course, that didn't last. She already had a long list of tasks that Jason wanted her to get done while he was gone, and he was continuously calling and texting as he remembered more. Just as she was about to leave for Matt's she got a text from Jason instructing her to pick up some package from the warehouse right away. He didn't specify to her what the item was, only that Rob would know what to give her when she got there. It seemed like Jason was keeping more and more information from her lately, and it was a troubling pattern she was starting to notice.

She called Matt as she was on her way to the warehouse.

"So…remember how I said sometimes I don't get a lunch break?" she asked him when he answered.

"I'm guessing this is one of those times?"

"I'm sorry," she said. "I thought I'd be able to since Jason is out of town, but he keeps calling and piling stuff on me like crazy, then giving me all these random deadlines to check in with him. I don't think I can get away. Rain check?"

"Sure. Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow," she agreed, hoping she wouldn't have to run around as much as she did today.

When Sarah got to the warehouse, she didn't see Rob anywhere in sight. But she did spot his son sitting at the same picnic table he'd been at the first time she'd ever come here. He was concentrating on the book he was reading, but she could tell from the way his shoulders stiffened that he knew she was there.

"Is your dad around?" she asked him.

He looked up at her warily.

"He'll be back in a few minutes. He just went to the gas station."

Sarah nodded wordlessly, tucking her hair behind her ear. She didn't like knowing how this kid viewed her—as another heartless representative of a monstrous company who just showed up to put his family in more danger. He probably thought of her the way she'd thought of James Wesley, who'd destroyed both her father's life and her own with zero remorse.

Of course, that was exactly the image she should probably be striving to project if she wanted to keep her cover, but doing so made her feel vaguely ill. She cleared her throat uncomfortably, figuring she could at least try to make some small talk. Even if he didn't respond, he could know that at least one of the contacts his dad had to deal with was a human and not some silent robot.

"What are you studying for?" she settled on asking. It was too late for school to still be in session, so she assumed he was taking some kind of summer course.

"AP Calculus," he answered without looking up from his textbook.

"Oh, I took that," Sarah said. "I mean, mine wasn't AP, it was just regular. And—I got a C-minus. But, um…I took it."

Surprisingly, that actually got him to look up.

"My dad would  _kill_ me if I ever got a C-minus," he said with a rueful shake of his head.

"I don't think mine ever noticed," Sarah said. Her high school years had overlapped with some of the heavier drinking years on Mitch Corrigan's track record. "I only took it because my guidance counselor thought girls were bad at math, and it made me mad."

It was mindless, nervous chatter on her part, but at least it was getting him to stop looking at her like she was going to pull a gun on him at any moment.

"It…kind of sounds like you  _are_  bad at math, though," he pointed out cautiously.

"Well, yeah. But not because I'm girl," she said defensively. "It was because I was lazy and just wanted to pass notes on those fancy calculators."

"Y'all had those back then?"

Sarah frowned. "…back when?"

"The nineties?" he hazarded with a shrug.

"You think I was in high school in the nineties?" Sarah repeated, her eyes widening. "I graduated high school in 2007."

"Oh, okay," he said uncertainly.

"I'm only in my twenties."

"…cool."

"And we had calculators," she mumbled, finally spotting Rob coming across the yard. She was mildly relieved to be done trying to talk to this teenager who clearly thought she was some sort of ancient crone—which, she supposed, wasn't the worst thing he could think of her. Readjusting her bag on her shoulder, Sarah glanced over at him as she stood up. "Good luck with your homework."

"Thanks," he said distractedly, already concentrating on his work again. That was a good thing, Sarah thought. That he was able to focus on his school work with all of this craziness going on around him and his father.

"Was Tyler bothering you?" Rob asked as she walked up to him.

"What? Oh, no. I was just asking him about school," she said.

Rob squinted at her suspiciously but didn't say anything.

"Um, I'm supposed to pick something up from you," she said. "Jason said you'd know what it was."

"Right. Yeah. It'll be back here."

Sarah followed him into the back of the warehouse, to a large, cold room she hadn't been in before. There were several tall metal storage cabinets, and in the corner sat several large freezers. She couldn't stop looking at them, wondering if they held what she thought they did. Rob followed her gaze, and she suspected by his disturbed expression that she was right.

He unlocked one of the metal cabinets and pulled out a wooden crate. Something glass clinked around inside as he handed it to her.

"Be careful with that. Don't let it tip."

"Why?" she asked, looking down at the crate in alarm. "What's in it?"

"Dunno. That's just how the guy who brought it here warned me," Rob said.

Sarah was listening, but she couldn't stop herself from glancing over at the freezers in the corner again. She knew she shouldn't ask about them, but in the end, her morbid curiosity won out.

"Are those where…I mean, do you keep…" she stammered.  _Is that where you keep all the dead bodies we bring you?_

Rob looked away, and it was answer enough.

"That guy who you brought here," he said suddenly. "In your trunk. He's that missing cop that's been in the newspapers. Isn't he?"

She pressed her lips together and gave a short nod.

"Doesn't seem like anyone's trying very hard to find him," Rob said.

"His mother is," she whispered before she could stop herself.

"What?"

She shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut. Maybe it was just knowing that she was in the same room as the body, but she couldn't stop thinking about McDermott's mother handing her that photo of him. And Rob was one of the only people with whom she actually shared some of that particular burden.

"It's…it's driving her crazy," Sarah said. "Not knowing what happened to him. She's been outside the police station asking for help finding him every day. In the heat, getting sunburned. No one's listening to her."

"That's awful," Rob said after a long, somber silence.

"I don't think she's going to stop."

"Neither would I. If it was my kid that went missing," Rob said candidly. "Even if the smart thing for her to do would be to skip town. Leave it all behind."

"She can't even afford to do that. She can't get survivor's benefits because he's just missing, and not dead, and she—" Sarah finally caught herself. She had to stop thinking about this, and especially talking about it. "I don't know why I'm talking about this. There's nothing we can do about it."

"Right," Rob said. He looked over at the freezers once more. "What's done is done."

Sarah had to get out of that room before her chest burst.

"Um…thanks for the box," she said tightly. "I'll—I'll try not to let it explode or anything."

Then she left the warehouse as quickly as she could, trying not to think about Rob and his son or Mrs. McDermott and hers.

* * *

On Tuesday, Matt and Sarah's second attempt at making plans fell through just as quickly as the first. Matt called her just before they were supposed to meet up for to tell her that he had to cancel. One of his clients had gotten arrested again for some minor offense, and he needed to get to the police station to represent him.

Then Matt had client meetings that night, and Sarah had lunch plans with Lauren on Wednesday. It seemed like despite no longer avoiding each other, they still couldn't quite manage to meet up. How was it that Matt had been constantly around back when seeing him had been the very last thing she wanted, but now that they actually wanted to see each other they couldn't seem to make it work?

But on Wednesday night, their luck finally changed.

Sarah had had a long and stressful day of trying to keep up with the work Jason had left her, and when she got home she breathed a sigh of relief as her front door shut behind her. She had a bit of a headache, and she just wanted to change out of her work clothes, curl up on her couch, and drink some tea while pretending there was whiskey in it.

She was only partway through step one of that plan when her phone started buzzing from inside her purse on the kitchen counter. She let out a frustrated groan, hoping it wasn't Jason calling with even more tasks to add to her workload.

Her frustration disappeared when she saw that instead of her overbearing boss calling, it was Matt.

"Hi," she answered, cradling the phone with her shoulder as she reached down to slip off one of her heels.

"Hey. You busy?"

"No. I just got home."

"Have you eaten dinner yet?"

"No. I was just deciding between, uh…" Sarah opened her fridge, taking stock of her its measly contents. "…cold pizza or stale cereal. But if you think you could do better…"

Matt chuckled. "I can try. I know a place you might like. It's only a couple blocks from my apartment."

"Okay," she said. "You don't think you'll have to cancel on me in the time it'll take me to get there?"

"I promise," he assured her. "Do you want to meet at my place?"

"Yeah, okay. I'll be there soon," she said, grinning as she hung up the phone.

So instead of changing into the sweatpants and old t-shirt she had planned on, Sarah instead slipped on a pair of shorts and one of her nicer sleeveless blouses. Before leaving her apartment, she couldn't help but take a last glance in the mirror. She fully realized it was ridiculous; it wasn't as though Matt would know if her makeup was touched up or her hair was messy. She had been wearing pajama shorts a good eighty percent of the times she'd seen him since they met. But all the same, she found herself readjusting her blouse and running a brush through her hair before leaving.

On the way there, she tried to ignore the little voice in her head that reminded her how vague she'd left things the last time she'd seen Matt. She'd been so relieved that he had agreed to stick around and figure things out that she hadn't really stopped to think about what that actually meant. Figure what out/ Were they trying to work their way back to how they had been before they'd kissed, or to move forward from there? Was this just the two of them grabbing dinner, or was it something like a date?

The uncertainty about where they stood with each other wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the total imbalance in their respective abilities to read each other. As soon as she stepped foot in Matt's place all of her confusion and nervousness would be wildly apparent, while she could still barely guess what went on in his own mind, especially in regards to her.

_Figuring it out_.  _God, I'm dumb._

Just as she was turning onto Matt's block, she rounded the corner at the same time as someone else coming in the opposite direction. He was a tall, thin teenage boy who was walking fast while holding a very large iced coffee in one hand while scrolling through his phone with the other. The two of them collided, and the contents of the boy's drink quickly ended up all over the front of Sarah's shirt.

She yelped in surprise, her shoulders bunching up as she looked down at herself.

He took in the sight of his iced coffee soaking into her outfit and her mouth hanging open in disbelief, then sucked air in through his teeth, wincing apologetically.

"Ooh. Sorry, my bad," he said.

Then he tossed his empty cup in the nearby trashcan and continued walking, his attention back on his phone.

"Are you kidding me?" Sarah grumbled. Her shirt was now soaked, and she tried in vain to pluck it away from where it was plastered uncomfortably against her skin. "No one needs that much coffee!" she shouted after the teenager, who had not bothered to remove his headphones and most definitely didn't hear her.

Heaving a sigh, she kept walking to her destination.

She wasn't sure why she'd been expecting Matt to be wearing one of the suits she always saw him in; after all, there was no need to when working from home. But it was simply how she always pictured Daytime Matt, so she was surprised when he answered the door wearing a dark blue button-up shirt and jeans. His hair was slightly messy, and he had a small but new-looking bruise just along his hairline. He wasn't wearing his glasses, and she could see a more faded cut just above his eyelid as well. It looked like he had been busy since she'd last seen him.

"Hi," she said.

"Hey," he said, his warm smile making her nervous enough she almost forgot about her ruined outfit. "Come on in."

With a curious look, Matt swiveled his head to follow her path as she moved past him into the apartment.

"You smell like coffee."

"I look like coffee," she mumbled.

"What?"

Sarah sighed. "I had a very long day, topped off by some guy spilling his iced coffee all over me as I was coming here."

The corners of Matt's mouth twitched, but he very politely refrained from laughing.

"At least it was iced," he pointed out diplomatically.

"Funny," she said, glancing down at her ruined blouse. This was karma. This was the universe noticing that she'd been worried about what to wear on a maybe-date with a blind guy and reminding her that she was an idiot. "If you're going to make fun of me will you please let me borrow something else to wear?"

"Of course."

Matt went into his bedroom to grab her a shirt. As Sarah waited, she let her eyes wander around the room. Her gaze lingered on the splintered banister and she frowned, remembering Matt's mysteriously busted hand. She turned away from it, looking instead at the dining room table that Matt had turned into his home office. There were files and papers spread out across the surface, and in the middle of the table was a printer noisily churning out what at first appeared to be blank sheets of paper. Upon closer inspection, she saw tiny raised dots of Braille covering the pages.

"I've never seen one of these," she said, reaching out to run her fingers over the printed pages. She didn't bother raising her voice, knowing that Matt would hear her just fine in the other room. "Is it supposed to make that…grinding noise?"

"No, it's just broken," Matt called from his bedroom. "It's one of the cheapest models, but I still can't afford a new one."

"How much was it?" she asked curiously.

"About five thousand dollars," he said as he re-entered the room.

"Oh, shit." Sarah snatched her hand away. She sent Matt a guilty look. "I wasn't touching it."

He grinned at her sticker shock and handed her the light gray button-up shirt he was holding.

"Disabilities are expensive," he said with a shrug.

That was true, and it raised an interesting question. She assumed the screen reader she often saw him use was also expensive, and probably the Braille books on his bookshelf, too. And Matt's law firm wasn't exactly rolling in cash.

"Don't you usually get paid in, like…apple fritters, or something?" she asked him uncertainly.

"Foggy gets paid in apple fritters," he corrected her. "I prefer bagels."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "So, how do you afford all of the things you need plus your bulk eBay orders of scary black outfits?"

"We do have  _some_  clients who pay us money. Enough to keep the place from folding, at least."

"And you aren't worried that you'll become known as the law firm that takes donuts as payment?"

"Well, I can't speak for the other two, but that's…sort of the image I'm aiming for, to be honest."

Sarah squinted at him. "You're  _aiming_  for donut lawyer?"

"More for being accessible," Matt said with a laugh. "We obviously need some paying clients to keep us afloat, but…I hope that if someone really needs help, they'll have heard about Nelson and Murdock and know that they can come to us and not be denied help just because they can't afford it. There are so many people who just get completely railroaded by the legal system because they can't afford a lawyer. So either they just give up or they get stuck with a court-appointed public defender who has too many cases to care about any of them. I'd like people to know they have another option, even if they don't have any money."

Sarah studied him as he talked, taking in the way he started gesturing with his hands like he often did when he was passionate about something. She'd heard him talk this way about his activities as Daredevil many times, seen the way his face and posture changed when he was talking about doing what he believed was right. This was the first time she'd really heard him talk about his law career in the same way. She didn't think she'd ever met anyone else who was so driven to help people—to the point of obsession, if they were being honest—and as she watched him the corners of her lips curled upward.

"You aren't saying much," he noted with a grin. "You think it's a bad business model."

"No," she said quickly. "I mean—yes, definitely. It—it makes no financial sense at all. But…it's good. People knowing that you're out there. That's a good thing."

Matt's wry grin slid into something more genuine. It seemed like confirmation that his law firm was doing good things was one of the only kinds of compliments he knew how to accept. Sarah took mental note of that, and she was still watching him for a beat when he nodded at the shirt in her hands.

"Did you want something different?" he asked.

Sarah blinked and looked down at the shirt she was holding. She realized she still hadn't gone to change into it.

"Uh—no," she said abruptly, her face heating up. "This is good. I'll…go put it on."

Shaking her head, she ducked into the bathroom to change. The iced coffee had quickly soaked through her blouse to her bra, and she sent a wistful look at one of the only nice bras she owned, which was now stained a dingy brown. She balled both of them together and shoved them into her bag, then slipped Matt's shirt on instead. It smelled distinctly like him, but since he didn't wear anything scented—for obvious reasons—she couldn't quite place what that smell was. Something clean and calming and subtle.

The shirt was—unsurprisingly—much too large for her, leaving just a glimpse of her shorts visible underneath the hem. She stepped out of the bathroom as she finished rolled the sleeves up several times until they reached her elbow.

Matt was picking up some of the paperwork on his desk, and he lifted his head when she came back in the room. His fingers froze over the papers for a moment, then he swallowed.

"Better?" Matt said.

"Well, we don't really wear the same size, so it's a little bit 'Risky Business'. But it's dry, so...I appreciate it."

"It's no problem."

"Um, so, on a scale of one to ten…how set are you on going someplace where, um…people can see me?"

Matt cocked his head, considering it. "If I say ten, will you go out in public wearing that?"

Sarah looked down at her appearance in dismay.

"…yes," she said unconvincingly.

Matt laughed. "I figured you might prefer to order in now."

"I feel bad," she protested. "The whole point was for you to get out of your apartment for a while."

"That wasn't the point. That was a bonus. And anyway, I get out at night."

"Beating people up is not the same thing as going out to dinner."

"Good point," Matt said, slipping his hands into his pockets. "Let's go, then."

Sarah chewed her lip. To be honest, she really didn't want to go out in public right now—partially because of her appearance, but partially just because she'd had a long and stressful day, and being able to relax with just Matt was tempting.

"We could order in," she said.

"We could order in," he agreed. "Let me just clean some of this up."

Matt gathered the papers he had spread out and stacked them up. As he was doing that, Sarah looked closer at the flip phone on Matt's table; it was larger and more heavily scratched than the one she usually saw him use.

"Did you get a new burner phone?" she asked.

She caught an uncomfortable grimace cross Matt's face before he strode over to the table.

"Uh, no," he said, casually slipping the phone into his jacket pocket. "Just an extra."

Sarah raised her eyebrows at that. How was someone with a secret identity so bad at lying?

"Right."

"Sorry about the mess. It doesn't look like it, but there's a system to it," Matt said, changing the subject as smoothly as he'd tucked the burner phone out of sight. Sarah didn't call him on it right then, but she made a mental note of his weirdness.

"How's working from home going?" she asked, going along with the subject change.

Matt gave a noncommittal jerk of his head.

"I'm keeping busy. There's a lot of work to get done, even splitting it with Foggy. And not having Karen around to help with transcribing adds on a good amount of work, too, so I can't say I'm bored, at least." He grabbed something from a drawer in his kitchen, then walked back towards her with it. "This  _should_  be a menu for the place I'm thinking of. They shove one under my door every two or three days, so I figured I should hang on to one for company."

"Have you talked to them?" she asked, taking the menu. "Foggy and Karen, I mean, not the…restaurant flyer guys."

Matt shrugged one shoulder half-heartedly. "Kind of. Foggy and I have emailed about some files I'd asked him for, and a couple of questions he had on a client I was working with, but...that's it. Strictly work-related. I don't even know if Foggy and Karen are talking to each other yet."

"I'm sorry. It sucks you have to be stuck in here all day."

"It was my suggestion," he said, shaking his head. "I'm the source of the office tension, so…it makes sense to take me out of the equation and let the two of them figure things out."

Sarah made a skeptical hum.

Matt raised his eyebrows. "What?"

She had bitten her tongue in the church when the subject had come up, not wanting to get into a whole thing about his friends while simultaneously trying to stop him from cutting her off. But she hated seeing how resigned he was to being the only person who was in the wrong in this situation.

"Well...it sounds to me like Foggy can kind of…go screw himself?" She hadn't meant for that to come out sounding quite so uncertain, but she assumed it was her brain automatically protesting the idea of ever insulting Foggy Nelson in front of Matt Murdock. "I mean…just temporarily."

Whatever Matt had been expecting her to say, that apparently wasn't it.

"What? You adore Foggy. You've gotten along better with him than me for ninety percent of the time we've known each other," he reminded her.

"Well, yeah. He's usually been the friendlier one out of the two of you," she said.  _Not that that was a particularly high bar to beat._  "But I wasn't expecting this reversal of which one of you is the bigger asshole. Right now it's Foggy, which is confusing. I don't like it."

Before she had even finished speaking, Matt was shaking his head, dismissing the very idea that Foggy was also being unreasonable.

"He has a right to be upset. I lied to him for—"

"Yeah, but—but didn't he already forgive you for that?" Sarah interrupted. "I mean, from what I understand, you guys had the big fight and then…moved past it. If he wasn't over it, he should have said something before Karen found out. You can't tell someone you forgive them and then take it back the second things get difficult. That's not how it works. Whether he forgives _you_  can't depend on whether Karen forgives  _him_. It's not, like, forgiveness…dominoes."

She winced as she said that, wishing she was better at metaphors.

"It's complicated," Matt hedged. "I can't pretend like my actions didn't have an effect on their relationship."

Sarah sighed, trying to spin the conversation away from argumentative and more towards supportive—which is what she had initially been aiming for, but it was hard not to get sidetracked by Matt's stubbornness.

"You didn't force Foggy to keep your secrets, Matt. And…you didn't make him keep you in his life. He made that choice, because he decided you were worth it. And he'll make that same choice again," Sarah said sincerely. Because she'd had too many conversations with Foggy in which he tried to convince her of the goodness of Matt Murdock for her to ever believe that he'd truly change his mind about that. "I mean, he's  _acting_ like an asshole right now, but I don't think he actually  _is_  one. He's a good friend, and…he'll come around."

Matt was quiet, and it—shockingly—seemed like maybe he was actually considering what she was saying.

"And Karen?" he asked.

"Her, too," Sarah said, but her uncertainty came through in her tone. She didn't know Karen well enough to gauge that kind of thing. And what she  _did_ know about her—or rather, what she suspected about her—didn't inspire much trust. But both Matt and Foggy seemed to have a fairly good sense of judgment—maybe Foggy more than Matt—and Karen had won them both over.

"Convincing," Matt said dryly.

"I don't know Karen very well," Sarah admitted. "But I know you. And you're an easy person to forgive. Like…annoyingly easy. And if she's the kind of person you and Foggy keep saying she is, she'll see that."

Matt's expression was difficult to interpret, and Sarah wondered if she'd ever be able to work out the complexities enough to read him whenever she wanted. Sometimes she couldn't tell if these reassurances she tried to give him sank in at all, or if they just bounced right off him.

"Well…until then, I'm stuck working here."

"Doesn't seem that bad," Sarah said, trying to lighten the atmosphere a bit. "You…don't have to wear a suit and tie. And you don't have to walk to work in the heat with the—the hot garbage smell everywhere. You could order takeout for  _every meal_  if you wanted to."

She was relieved to see Matt crack a grin. Sometimes it seemed like any kind of pressing into his personal life put him on edge, but it seemed like this time the subject had actually passed by smoothly enough.

"I do still have to deal with the smell of garbage when I go out at night," he pointed out.

"Well, that's your fault for not picking a cleaner city to save people in," she said, folding the menu back up and tapping it against his chest. "I'll take the number seven."

"What about your work?" Matt asked, taking her menu from her. "What's going on there?"

It occurred to Sarah that if they were any other two people, that might be a normal, mundane question. To other people it didn't always mean 'Did anyone shoot a gun near you today?' or 'Did you manage to steal any files without getting caught and murdered?'

But they weren't two normal people, and she didn't have a normal job. Her thoughts drifted to Jason and his extra weirdness lately, then to Mahoney's pointed questions, and to Mrs. McDermott's stricken face in the photos that still sat in her drawer. She felt her stomach tighten into knots.

"It's, uh…it's…" Sarah hesitated, not sure where to begin. There was nothing solidly  _bad_  going on so much as just a constant sense of building dread, to the point where she couldn't tell if she was just being paranoid or not. But she did know that as soon as they started talking about Orion that was all the night would be about, and she really didn't want that. "Hey, um…what if—what if we didn't talk about work tonight?"

Matt raised his eyebrows. "That doesn't sound like a good sign."

"No, it's not because anything extra bad is happening. I mean, just…regular levels of evil stuff, I guess," she said. "But that place is all I think about all day while I'm there, and most nights when I go home. I know I have a lot to catch you up on, but maybe tonight we could just…skip that part."

"I notice that you instituted this no shop-talk policy  _after_ drilling me about my job and coworkers," he noted.

"I don't make the rules," she said with a shrug, despite having just literally made up the rule.

"Alright," he agreed. "We'll skip it tonight."

Sarah smiled, and a bit of the tension that had been sitting in her shoulders lifted away.

Despite the somewhat rocky start of ruined clothing and near-arguments about the basics of friendship, the maybe-a-date—because Sarah still wasn't quite sure—slowly turned into something easier. She hadn't realized how stressed she'd been the last couple of weeks until just now, sitting on Matt's couch eating the food that had been delivered while talking about things of no real importance.

For his part, Matt also seemed more relaxed—if a bit confused, as Sarah was currently in the middle of trying to convince him to give her favorite soap opera a try. He had a half-amused, half-exasperated grin as she tried unsuccessfully to explain the plot to him.

"…so, then his brother is played by the same actor who plays his father and his father's twin brother in the flashback, which is confusing."

"Right."

"And the two families have had some sort of big falling out about, um…maybe an illegitimate child? Or possibly a mansion burning down. I'm not really sure on the translation."

"How? Those aren't even remotely similar in Spanish," Matt said while laughing.

"What, you speak Spanish?" she asked in surprise.

"A little. Enough to tell that you don't."

Sarah scoffed. "Anyway. The cliffhanger at the end of this last season was about which one of them sunk the main pirate ship—"

"Pirate ship?" Matt interrupted her, his brow furrowing in confusion. "I thought it was a medical drama."

"Oh, it's that, too. Some of them are surgeons."

"The pirates are surgeons?" he asked doubtfully.

"No, not  _all_  of them. That would be ridiculous," she said. "Only  _some_  of the pirates are surgeons. But, um, all of the surgeons…are pirates."

The look on Matt's face made it clear he was not going to come over to her side on this.

"And this is your  _favorite_  TV show?" Matt clarified.

"Yes! It's the best show on right now. Or at least on any of the seven channels that my apartment gets for free."

"That explains it."

"Okay, fine. You're missing out on excellent television," she said. She pushed her hair out of her face as she leaned back against the throw pillow she'd propped up against the arm of the couch. "When did you learn to speak Spanish, anyway?"

"College. And a little more in law school. I wanted to be able to connect with clients who don't speak much English," he said. "Meanwhile, Foggy took Punjabi, which so far has never come in handy."

Sarah laughed. Both of those choices sounded so very right based on what she knew about the two of them.

"Well, that sounds like you speak more than just a little Spanish. Say something," she prompted.

"Like what?"

"Just whatever you're thinking, I guess," she said with a shrug. "I won't know the difference."

"Alright, uh…" Matt was quiet for a beat, thinking. A faint smile lingered on his lips as his sightless eyes flicked over her face. "Te he extrañado. Es bueno escuchar tu risa de nuevo."

_Oh._

She had no clue what he said, but it sounded very good coming from his mouth. Her fork stilled over her food for a moment as she stared at him before catching herself and clearing her throat.

"What, um…what does that mean?" she asked casually.

He smirked and leaned forward, grabbing the empty takeout boxes to throw away. "It means you have bad taste in television."

Sarah narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously as he strode into the kitchen. She barely spoke Spanish, but even she knew she hadn't heard the word for television anywhere in there.

"I don't think that—" Sarah faltered as she caught sight of a streak of bright red just under h the collar of Matt's shirt. It hadn't been visible in the somewhat dim lighting of his living room, but the brighter bulbs in his kitchen made the injury immediately apparent. "Hey. Are you bleeding?"

He frowned. "Am I?"

She got up from the couch and followed him into the kitchen. Matt brought a hand up to the base of his neck, just where it curved into his shoulder, and when he brought it back down there was a smear of blood across his fingers.

"You are," Sarah confirmed. She stood on her tip-toes to get a better look, then winced when she saw the jagged gash more clearly. "Oh, Matt. This looks painful."

"It's fine. A few of the stitches must have opened up again."

Sarah grabbed his box of first aid materials from the shelf where she knew he kept it, then glanced at the poorly lit living room.

"Your living room gets darker every time I come here," she informed him. "You might want to get some of your light bulbs replaced."

"Sorry," he said with a wry grin. "That chore tends to slip by my attention."

"Your kitchen lighting will do the trick, I think," she said, setting the kit on the counter before carefully lifted herself up to sit next to it. It put her at nearly the same height as Matt, which was perfect to fix up his ripped stitches without having to balance on her toes the entire time. Matt moved to stand in front of her, to the left of her legs so the outside of her knee was brushing against his waist. He rested one hand on the counter next to her. She was very aware of him in front of her, the warmth of his body just a few inches away from her own. She sent up a silent thank you that he hadn't been hurt anywhere that required him to remove his shirt, so she could hang on to at least some of her focus.

"Did you fix this up yourself?" she asked as she pulled on a pair of latex gloves.

"Why? Does it look like it was done by a blind guy?"

It kind of did, to be honest, but more telling was the fact that it looked like it was done by someone with little regard for if it healed or not. She wondered if he would ever look after his own injuries with the same care he took with hers.

"Well, I know I didn't do it. And it definitely doesn't look like Claire's work."

"I try not to go to Claire for anything less than twenty stitches."

Ignoring the fact that that was one of the more ridiculous things she'd heard him say, Sarah pushed the collar of his shirt aside and pressed a damp hand towel to the wound.

"And what about me?" she asked. "I don't have a minimum stitches requirement."

"It was almost three in the morning. You were sleeping, like most people."

"Matt! If you're hurt, wake me up," she said in exasperation. "If only so that our next date doesn't turn into a first aid session, too" she said without thinking.

Matt cocked his head, frowning. "Did you think this was a date?"

Sarah blinked.

"No—?" she faltered, caught off guard by the question, which seemed to clearly imply that he didn't. "Uh, no. I didn't. Did...you?"

"Definitely not," he said, and Sarah briefly wondered if you could literally die from embarrassment. "Because from what I've observed, your dates seem to involve you wearing...a particular kind of outfit."

She glanced up at him only to see that he was giving her that cocky grin, the one she usually only saw when they were in the ring and he was circling her, searching for new ways to knock her off balance. That smile always gave her a nervous tug in her stomach, and seeing it now was no different. She felt her cheeks flush, and from the way his grin widened it seemed that was the reaction he'd been looking for.

"I'd think those outfits would be a little wasted on a blind guy," she said, narrowing her eyes at the smug look on his face.

"Agree to disagree," he said without missing a beat.

Sarah laughed despite herself.

"Well, the fanciness of the outfit correlates to the fanciness of the date. Five-star restaurants get nice dresses, and everything else is…pajamas at best," she said, shrugging.

Matt snorted. "If your taste in food is anything like your taste in alcohol, I kind of doubt that."

"You know, you're being awfully smart with someone who's stitching your neck back together," she said, gesturing at his face with the needle in a vaguely threatening way.

"Watch where you're waving that," Matt said with a chuckle, catching her wrist to still her hand. "Anyway, maybe I was going to take you to a five-star restaurant if you hadn't dumped iced coffee all over yourself."

She opened her mouth indignantly.

"I did not dump it on myself—"

"If you were looking to steal more of my clothing, you could have just asked."

Sarah shook her head, trying to concentrate on her stitches and not on the blatantly flirting vigilante she was giving them to. The last thing she needed to do was accidentally stab some important vein with the needle because she got flustered.

"It's a good thing this isn't a date, because you're not being very charming," she said finally. "After all those stories I've heard about how good you are with girls."

Matt chuckled lowly. "Those are just stories."

"I don't know. I got to see a tiny glimpse of it when you were flirting with our waitress that one time."

"Our waitress?" he said, a crease appearing between his brows.

"Mhm. The pretty one who gave you her number because you kept smiling at her."

He finally seemed to recall who she was talking about.

"Right, that one," he said. Then he smirked. "I should call her."

Sarah laughed.

"You should. See if she'll come give you some stitches. She was very helpful."

"I…can't say I was paying her much attention," he admitted.

"No? No heartbeats or breathing patterns?" Sarah asked idly, focusing on tying off the last stitch.

"You're assuming that I listen to everyone as closely as I do to you."

Finally finished, she set down the needle and peeled off the latex gloves. "Don't you?"

"No. Most people are easy to tune out. Which is a good thing, or I'd go crazy. I have to concentrate to let them in. But some people are...difficult  _not_  to focus on," he said.

There was nothing left to do for the cut on Matt's neck, leaving them very close to each other with nothing to distract her from their proximity. She swallowed, knowing that for as much as she was aware of his closeness, he was aware of hers in all kinds of ways she wasn't.

She could feel her pulse quickening as it so easily did around him, and she wished she could turn it off and not be quite so transparent. But it was slowly becoming apparent to her that if she couldn't make herself any less noticeable, maybe she could at least lean into it.

"So…if you were focusing on me right now, what would you pick up?"

Matt raised his eyebrows. "I've always gotten the impression you didn't like me reading you."

"It's...disconcerting," she admitted. "But if you're always doing it anyway, I might as well find out what you're always picking up on that's so interesting. Just...this one time."

Matt thought about it for a moment.

"Well, right now I'm mostly just picking up…coffee."

Sarah rolled her eyes.

"Well, if that's all you're getting then maybe your senses aren't all they're cracked to be," she said lightly, although to be honest she was a little disappointed. She planted her hands on the counter so she could hop down, but Matt put a hand on her leg to still her.

"Be patient," he said with a grin. His blank eyes flicked over her face as he studied her, deciding where to start. "You really want to know?"

Sarah nodded. "Yes."

"Alright. Well...your hair is usually the easiest thing to pick up on. It smells like some kind of citrus shampoo, and it's always falling in your face," he said, gently pushing away the curtain of hair that was—sure enough—in the way. His hand lingered in her hair, making her struggle to focus as he continued talking. "You used a straightener this morning, but the humidity is making it wavy again."

Sarah laughed. "I think the word you're looking for is frizzy."

"I like it."

She bit her lip, shaking her head. "What else?"

"Uh…temperature. The temperature of your skin is rising alarmingly fast, but it _is_  summertime," Matt acknowledged innocently, though they were both fully aware that wasn't the reason. He brushed the fabric of her borrowed shirt aside and traced his fingers across her collarbone. As if on cue, she felt her skin flush, and the corner of his mouth quirked up. He let his fingers drift to the dip at the base of her throat, pressing there lightly. "Your breathing is shallow and uneven. You can only breathe like that for so long before you start to get lightheaded," he told her, as though her head wasn't spinning already. "Your muscles are tense. More than just the normal tension from a stressful day at work." Matt hesitated for just a second before taking his hand from her hair and brushing the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip, the rest of his fingers curling along her jaw. Sarah gripped the edge of the counter tightly, worried that the lightheadedness that hit her would make her lose her balance. "Your lip is swollen because you've been biting it, which you do when you're nervous, and you've been nervous since you walked through my door."

Matt didn't move his thumb from her lip, and she stayed very still as she watched him, transfixed. He was just a few inches from her, close enough that she could feel his body heat, and her heart was racing wildly, broadcasting how badly she wanted that short distance to be closed.

Sarah swallowed hard, struggling to form a reply even though he was barely touching her.

"Well, that was when I thought this was a date," she said raggedly. Her heartbeat was racing loudly in her own ears. "I'm…much calmer now."

His eyebrows went up and he grinned at her knowingly. It was cocky grin, but with a warmth underneath that made it clear he wasn't mocking her.

She honestly wasn't sure which one of them closed the last few centimeters between them; just that one second she was thinking about kissing him and the next second it was happening.

It was different this time than it had been that night on the roof. That first time she had partly been trying to prove a point to him about how she felt and he'd kissed her back like was never going to see her again—which she knew now was not too far from what his actual plan had been. The last time had been rushed and desperate and had made her blood race in her veins but it had also hurt in ways she still didn't really understand.

But this time was more cautious and careful than before—soft and slow with time between to breathe each other in—and so it surprised her that the head rush was just as strong and immediate as it had been the first time. Heat coursed through her, like coming into a warm house after being out in the rain. Matt's careful hold on her steadied her enough that she finally let go of the counter she'd been gripping for dear life, her hands finding a home at the nape of his neck.

The heat of Matt's hands disappeared from either side of her face as he explored other areas, first running down her waist, then skimming his fingertips along the outside of her thighs, leaving goosebumps in their wake.

The entire thing was terrifying in a way, but not in the obvious sense. What scared her wasn't knowing that the hands that on her waist were the same ones that brought so much violent destruction across Hell's Kitchen, or feeling the coiled strength of his muscles under her fingertips. What was so daunting was that this was actually _happening_ , that she was really crossing this line with a man who was so impossible to unlock, and the thought of exploring whatever this was with him was terrifying and thrilling and any other assortment of things that made her heart race.

She leaned into him more, sliding one hand down the broad plane of his chest. When she brushed against the left side of his ribcage he inhaled sharply, tensing in pain.

Sarah broke away abruptly, her eyes widening in alarm. In the moment, she'd nearly forgotten that touching him after a night of patrolling was like stepping around landmines.

"What's wrong?" she whispered.

"Nothing," he assured her, tipping her head back up towards him and bringing his mouth to hers again. "A few sore ribs."

But Sarah was very familiar by now with the Matt Murdock Principle of Bodily Damage: whatever level of severity he said an injury was, she could generally double that. Maybe triple it, depending on how actively he tried to keep her attention away from it. Even so, she allowed the kiss to continue for a brief moment before breaking away again.

"Sore as…broken?" she asked suspiciously. There were probably a few levels in between sore and broken, but assuming the worst seemed like a safe bet.

Matt slipped his hand into hers, entwining their fingers and leading her hand away from where it was hovering worriedly over his ribs.

"Sore as in...I'll live," he countered, seemingly wildly unconcerned about it.

Then he moved his lips to her neck, pressing a searing kiss just under her jaw that elicited a stuttering intake of breath from her.  _That's a good argument._ Suddenly any further concern she'd had towards his medical well-being seemed very distant in her mind, which she was fairly certain had been his intent.

"Y-you are pretty resilient," she admitted, her fingers curling tightly around his as her eyes fluttered closed. She felt his lips form into a smirk against her throat. She tilted her head to give him better access and he dragged his lips along her exposed skin, pressing a series of kisses down her neck before his lips were back on hers again. She was torn between missing the feel of them on her neck and enjoying the taste of him as she slipped her tongue inside his mouth.

She was vaguely aware of her phone buzzing on the counter somewhere nearby, but it was so very easy to ignore it right now. Whatever it was, it had to do with life outside of this apartment, and she didn't want to deal with that at the moment. There was so much they could both be worrying about right now, but all she could think was that they _deserved_ this—in between everything they had gone through and everything still to come, they deserved to have this small moment to themselves.

To her dismay, Matt pulled away from her as the sound of her phone continued.

"Should you answer that?" he asked, his amusement strangled by the thickness in his voice.

Sarah shook her head. "No."

To her relief, Sarah's phone went silent, no longer interrupting them. Then a few seconds later, she felt a buzzing underneath her fingers as Matt's burner phone began ringing in the inside pocket of his jacket. An uneasy feeling settled in Sarah's chest as he leaned back, reaching inside his jacket for his phone and flipping it open to answer.

Still sitting only a few inches from Matt, Sarah was close enough to clearly hear her best friend's voice coming through the other side of the line.

"Is she with you?" Lauren asked by way of greeting. Her voice sounded tight and worried. Sarah's eyes widened in alarm.

Matt frowned and handed Sarah his burner phone.

"Lauren? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Have you looked at the news?"

"The news? No. Why, what's happening?" Sarah asked. She sent a sharp glance out the window at the sky. "Is it aliens again?"

"It's not aliens. It's that cop…the one you knew, who—who died. He's on the news. They found his body."

Sarah's body went cold. She looked up at Matt, who was leaning against the counter with a hand on either side of her, listening intently. Sarah leaned over his arm to grab her own phone, quickly bringing up the local news on her browser.

Sure enough, McDermott's face was staring up at her under the 'Breaking News' headline.

_'Body of Missing Police Officer Found In Construction Site Near Hudson'_

Lauren was still talking, but her voice was drowned out by the high pitched noise in Sarah's ears.

"Shit," she whispered.  _"_ Shit,  _shit_."

_'The body of police officer Aaron McDermott was found in a construction site near the Hudson early on Thursday morning,_ ' the article read. _'Officer McDermott was reported missing since missing work on the 18th and subsequently missing a family dinner the next day. Construction at the site where he was found had been paused since mid-May due to budgetary restrictions…"_

"…and I thought you should know," Lauren's voice drifted back in.

"Thanks for the heads up," Sarah said faintly, still staring at her phone screen. "I—I have to go, Lauren."

"Okay. Let me know if you need anything."

Sarah knew that by 'anything' Lauren most likely meant a lawyer or bail money if someone figured out who had hidden that body.

"Thanks," she said, before hanging up.

"McDermott's body turned up," Matt surmised.

Sarah nodded wordlessly, pressing her palms to her eyes as she tried to stay calm.

"After this long? There's no way it was there that whole time without someone seeing it. Someone must have put it there," he said.

"Shit," Sarah swore. "Oh, god. I'm so stupid."

"What are you talking about?"

"Rob," she said. She dropped her hands away from her face. "The warehouse guy."

"Rob is the one you brought the body to in the first place, right? He knows you had something to do with his death?"

Sarah nodded.

"Is there anything connecting you to McDermott besides Rob and the security footage Jason has?"

She looked over at him. Matt was already in lawyer mode, making sure she wasn't legally connected to the crime, which must mean he was worried her getting arrested was a possibility.

"No. No, I—I don't think so. I got rid of the clothes with the blood on them a while ago, and I threw the hammer in the river. I have his burner phone. But it's off and the batteries are out."

"Okay. So no one has any reason to think you're involved."

"Actually…Sergeant Mahoney might."

Matt frowned. "Brett? What do you mean?"

"He was asking me about McDermott. About the time I came to see him—when I went to give the bribe back. And he asked about the night Ronan attacked me, and whether or not I knew that Donovan was McDermott's partner."

Matt tilted his head slowly.

"When did you have this conversation?"

"The other day, when I—um..." Sarah looked down uncomfortably. "...went down to the police station to try to find out more information about…about McDermott's mother."

"You  _what_?" Matt said incredulously. "Sarah, Jason could have new sources planted in there already. Or the cops might want to know why an Orion employee is asking questions about one of their missing colleagues."

"I know that! It's not like I went in barging in there asking about it. I had an excuse," she insisted. "Mahoney gave me his card that night in the alleyway. In case I wanted any information on—I don't know—support groups or trauma therapy or something. And you said he was a friend of yours. So I went down there to ask him for some pamphlets, and…they were already talking about her. I didn't even have to bring it up."

"What'd they say?"

"One of them thought that she just wants the survivor's benefits. I guess she would get them since he didn't have a spouse or any children, and he provided most of her income. I don't think she's doing this for the money, but…if his body was found, she would get that money. Maybe she could use it to move somewhere else."

"What even made you go down there in the first place?"

"There were these photos that someone sent Jason. They were pictures of her protesting outside the police station, and there was a note implying that she was…drawing too much attention to the issue."

"I take it Jason didn't react well to the photos?"

"He never saw them. I kept them. I put them in a locked drawer in my desk at work until I could…figure out what to do."

She hadn't really thought Matt's eyebrows could go any higher, but there they went.

"Do?"

"Or not do. I don't know, I…I just wanted to find out more about her. See if there was any way to get her to stop being so public and putting herself in danger. But I couldn't just go talk to her. Telling her to stop asking questions would just make her even more convinced that something was being covered up. I don't know, I hadn't thought it through yet and I wasn't going to do anything about it right now, but…"

"…but now there's a body, so something else must have happened."

"I talked to Rob about it. I asked him about what he did with the body. I…wanted to know what happened to it. To him," she corrected herself. "He has freezers where Orion has him keep...anyone they bring him. We started talking, and…I said too much. I mentioned the survivor's benefits. Just offhand. How she should leave town but she can't afford to. I didn't think he would go ahead and just dump the body somewhere to be found."

Matt nodded shortly. He seemed too focused on what was happening now to be as preoccupied with her screw-ups as she was.

"Okay. Even with Brett asking questions, there's no reason to think the police have any connection to you right now. I'll get near the precinct and see I can find out what they know," Matt said, striding towards the closet where he kept his Daredevil outfit. "I want you to stay here."

That caught her attention. "You don't think my place is safe?"

"I didn't say that. But I want to check it out first before you go back there. Just in case."

She wasn't sure if he thought the cops or Orion were more likely to be lurking there. Neither sounded appealing.

"Wait," she said suddenly. "I need to go talk to Rob."

"What, at the warehouse?"

"Yes. I need to find out what he's doing. If—if he told anyone what happened, or about me. Does—does he have some cover story so that he won't get killed for this?"

"Alright, just…hold off on that. Let me listen in at the police station first, see what I can find out. For all we know, he decided to turn on Orion completely and gave them your name, too."

Sarah blanched, but tried to keep her calm. She didn't think that was the game Rob was playing.

"Okay. Alright. But hurry," she said.

"I will. Just stay here."

And she did. After Matt left, Sarah paced around his apartment for a few minutes as her heart pounded. She poured herself a glass of water and sat on the couch, trying in vain to steady herself by breathing in deeply. But within a minute or two she found herself looking at her phone again, checking the local news site for any updates. She wasn't sure what she was expecting to see when she refreshed the page again and again; her own face next to Jason's, with a Wanted sign underneath?

_Jason_. When he found out—if he didn't know already—he was sure to go after Rob. He knew who Sarah had delivered the body to, and he was smart enough to know Rob was the most likely person to have made its reappear. But Rob  _must_  know that—right? He had to be smart enough to know that. He had a son to look after; there was no way he would have done something like this without having a plan.

But she needed to know for sure, and she couldn't wait any longer to find out. Before she could change her mind, Sarah dug through her purse for her stun gun and pepper spray.

"Sorry, Matt," she murmured. She pocketed both small weapons and headed for the door.

* * *

When she got to the warehouse, it was dark and quiet. The electric gate was open, and appeared to be off. She wasn't sure if that was a bad sign or not, but she stuck to the shadows as she approached just in case.

Standing on her tip toes, she looked in one of the small windows. There was no sign of movement or people inside. She glanced up at the second floor of the building, where she knew Rob and his son lived in a small loft apartment. For the first time, she noticed there was a light on in one of the rooms.

If the light seemed like a good sign, it was immediately countered by the ominous sight of Rob's front door, which was about a foot ajar. Sarah hesitated, then ascended the metal staircase towards the apartment as quietly as she could. For once her small stature was an asset, her light footsteps making almost no noise on the steps. She paused outside the door, listening, but she didn't hear any voices or movement inside.

Quietly swinging the door open, she felt a rush of mixed emotions when she saw that the apartment was empty. Not only that, but clearly abandoned.

The doors to both bedrooms were open, and she could clearly see that the closets had been mostly emptied. What clothes did remain were hanging haphazardly off their hangers, as though their neighbors had been quickly yanked off. Walking around, she saw that the kitchen cabinets were empty as well, with only a small amount of perishable food left in the refrigerator. The bulkier items—the television, a desktop computer, kitchen appliances, decorative pieces—were all still there, but all the toiletries were gone from the bathroom, and an empty file box on the coffee table that she assumed had held personal documents.

Rob and his son had cleared out, and it looked like they'd done so in a hurry. She wondered how much time had passed between Rob deciding to dump the body and actually doing it. It seemed like there hadn't been time to prepare an exit plan. Maybe he'd done it fast, before he could second guess it and change his mind; it's how she would have done it.

She was so focused on the contents of Rob's apartment that she didn't notice the shadow in the doorway until it spoke.

"You shouldn't have come here alone."

Sarah jumped and stifled a scream, whipping around with her stun gun in her hand even as her brain registered who had spoken. Matt's expression beneath the mask was less than pleased.

"Holy shit," she breathed out, then slowly flicked the switch on her stun gun to Off. "You scared me."

"I'm the least scary thing you could have run into here. There could have been cops waiting for you, or some of Jason's men."

"No, you're definitely scarier than most cops," she muttered, then glanced around the room again. She let out a shaky breath. "Rob's gone. It looks like he and his son left town."

"That was smart of him," Matt said. "Except now if Jason is looking for someone to blame…"

"…it just leaves me," she finished, nearly whispering. "I know."

"When does he get back to New York?"

"Supposedly Monday. But he might come back earlier now." Sarah bit her lip, not wanting to ask about the police but knowing she had to. "Did you find anything out at the police station?"

"It sounds like they're nowhere close to knowing what happened," Matt said.

A small amount of buzzing tension left her frame, lifting from where it had sat heavily on her shoulders.

"Seriously?"

"McDermott was apparently…pretty well known in the department for being on the take. It's surprising he didn't get caught up in the Fisk sweep, to be honest," Matt said, sounding much like the police officer Sarah had heard talking to Mahoney. "He was mixed up in so many different things that the rest of the cops in his department don't know where to look first. I heard mention of the Yakuza, the Dogs of Hell, some Italian politician…but nothing about Orion."

"What about Donovan?"

"He  _could_ say something about McDermott's connection to Orion, in theory. But I wouldn't bet on it. His main concern is self-preservation, and he knows that ratting out Jason would do the opposite of that."

Sarah nodded tightly.

"Okay," she said. Relief snaked its way through her, but it felt like a trick. Somewhere, there was something connecting her to that body—beyond the incriminating surveillance footage that was currently in Jason's possession. Given Jason's own presence on the tape, it seemed a safe bet that it wouldn't surface anywhere. "Good to know that me being an idiot won't get me arrested yet, I guess."

They left Rob's loft, stepping out onto the staircase that snaked down the back of the warehouse. It faced the river, and the breeze off the water made Sarah's hair fly around her face. She pushed it out of the way and lingered at the railing for a moment, looking out over the river where she had thrown McDermott's badge and murder weapon into the depths. The memory made her stomach twist. When she turned to follow Matt down the stairs, she found him observing her intently.

"Why have you been so fixated on this?" he asked. "All of this with McDermott."

Sarah bit her lip; she didn't know how to explain it in any way that didn't make her sound completely irrational. She shook her head and turned away from Matt, resting both her hands on the rusty railing.

"I think it's normal to fixate on something you can go to prison for," she said.

"You know that's not what I mean. Why are you so intent on making things right with his family? You didn't kill him, Sarah."

She hesitated. "I don't know if it will make any sense."

"Try me."

Focusing on the peeling paint that coated the railing, Sarah chipped away at it with her thumbnail. She might as well try to put it into words, she supposed. At worst, Matt would echo what she'd already been thinking and tell her she was being crazy. At best, maybe he of all people would get what she was feeling.

"Okay. I didn't kill McDermott, but…I did kill Ronan."

There was a long pause.

"That wasn't your fault," Matt said softly. "It was an accident."

She turned her head to look at him. She knew it wasn't her fault, but that wasn't the problem. If she was feeling guilty about Ronan that would be easy, and Matt would be on her side. The problem wasn't that she felt guilty; it was that she didn't. And she wasn't sure how he would react to that.

"I know. And I keep waiting to feel guilty about it anyway, but…I don't. I know I probably should, because he—he was a person and he's dead because of me. But even if I had known that dart would kill him, I think…I think I would have done it anyway," she confessed. "He was a monster who was never going to leave me alone, and…I'm glad he's dead."

It was a heavy truth to tell someone who had a strict code of not killing despite being more than capable of doing so. This was reaffirmed by the long stretch of silence after her admission, during which she couldn't bring herself to look at Matt. Instead she nervously rushed to continue explaining.

"A-and I know that you have a whole thing about, like, God and murder and so I—I figured maybe it was something I would just keep to myself. But then I ran into McDermott's mother that day, and…there was the guilt I'd been waiting for," she said. "It was almost a relief. Like that was how I'm  _supposed_ to feel, and now I do. I feel guilty every time I think about her, and it just seemed like a sign that…that I should help her. Or at least try to."

She'd been hoping that her explanation would start to make more sense as it went along, but she was afraid it didn't. There was no real logical reason for her to have connected Ronan and McDermott's deaths in her brain, much less for her to have somehow assigned it any kind of value in her sense of self-worth. It was just a jumble of emotions that even she didn't really understand.

She finally worked up the courage to glance over at Matt, but of course it was difficult to tell his expression with half his face covered.

Matt wet his lips, appearing to be choosing his words carefully. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, and she might not have been able to hear him over the wind off the water if he hadn't been standing so close.

"Not killing is a choice that I make. But I don't expect everyone to do the same. I'm religious, not naïve," he said. Sarah breathed out a sad, soft laugh. "And I'm not sanctimonious enough to hold it against you for being glad that the man who tried to rape you is dead," he said flatly.

Hearing him say that was a bigger relief than she had expected.

"I never thought I'd become the kind of person who could kill someone and not feel bad about it," she said. "Not even by accident. And I can't help thinking that's it's a bad sign, you know? Like—what if this is the first step towards me becoming heartless like everyone else who works at Orion?"

Matt let out sharp laugh of disbelief, and Sarah narrowed her eyes at him. Here she was pouring her heart out, and he was laughing at her?

"It's not funny," she said.

"I'm sorry. But heartless is the last word I would use to describe you," Matt said. "If that were true, you wouldn't be standing at this warehouse right now. You'd still be safely in my apartment where I stupidly thought you might stay put," he said pointedly, though without much heat. "Instead, you came here to make sure Rob and his son were okay, even though it was dangerous."

"I was the one who put them in danger in the first place, by opening my big mouth." Sarah threw her hands up in frustration. "And now I might have brought the police down on me, and I pissed off my terrifying boss, and made Rob pick up his whole life and run."

"Rob needed to get his son away from Orion either way," Matt argued. "It seems like he figured that out."

Sarah was quiet for a moment. "She might not have known how awful her son was. McDermott's mother. She just knew he was hers, and now he's gone. I just wanted to give her some closure."

"Well…it looks like you did."

"This wasn't my ideal way that could have happened," she said. "Now it feels like everything's going to come crashing down."

Maybe Matt was going to tell her that wasn't true. Or maybe he was going to agree. Either way, the moment was interrupted by the sound of a car pulling up to the gate of the warehouse. Matt heard it just a few moments before she did, and his head whipped in the direction of the sound.

"Come on," he said, grabbing her hand and quickly heading down the stairs. Sarah heard the engine turn off and two car doors open.

Matt swiftly pulled her underneath the metal stairwell so they were both concealed by the shadows underneath. Her back hit the wall as he pressed her against it, his chest a few centimeters from hers as they waited for the men to pass by. His head was turned as he listened to their surroundings, one hand hovering over the batons he kept strapped to his leg while his other hand splayed flat against her stomach to keep her still. She hoped that he would attribute her erratic heartbeat to the danger of the situation—which, to be fair, it partially was—and not to anything else. Because she knew it was ridiculous to be so aware of him right now but it  _had_  only been just a few hours ago that his hands were on her in a very different context, and she couldn't really control where her brain went when it was panicking.

Sarah could hear two men conversing as their shoes crunched across the gravel towards the warehouse, but she couldn't make out what they were saying yet. They didn't bother going into the actual warehouse, instead heading directly for the staircase Matt and Sarah were hiding under. Their boots were loud on the metal steps above her head, and she could only catch snatches of what they said over the sound.

"—doesn't want to use his own people for this shit anymore—"

"—I'm tellin' you, the guy's paranoid—"

A minute later, she could hear one of them clearly for the first time as his voice came through the window of the loft.

"They skipped town," the man said. "Smart move."

"If I pissed off a guy like Jason, I'd run too."

"Tell me about it. Which one of us gets to call him and tell him this guy is gone?"

"Not me. I'm not trying to end up getting locked up in that place instead. I don't think he even has cameras there. Had all that high tech shit installed,, but he doesn't want any of it caught on camera."

"I don't think anyone at Orion even knows it exists."

"Paranoid as hell."

"Yeah, well. I'm sure a guy like that will find something else to use that place for."

The two men's voices faded as they crunched back across the gravel to their car. Matt waited another beat after they pulled away before letting go of her.

"Jason knows already."

"I'm not surprised," she said. Jason had eyes and ears all over the city, it seemed. "And he knows it was Rob."

"But as far as he knows, you delivered the body to the warehouse like he told you to, and then you never had anything to do with it again. Right?"

"Right."

But that wouldn't stop him from murdering her with whatever tools were handy if he was in the right mood.

"What place were they talking about?" Matt asked her.

"I don't know. He…hasn't mentioned any sites with no cameras," she said. Then she remembered something. "But…he did order a bunch of keypad locks that I never saw anyone install in the doors at Orion."

"Do you know where they would have been installed?"

"It might be on the invoice. I'd have to look."

"That means he used company money, but it didn't sound like he disclosed it to Vanessa."

Sarah raised her eyebrows. Using Wilson Fisk's company money to buy yourself property and then keeping it a secret from his wife wasn't a smart game. Then again, neither was the game she was playing, and she knew that Jason's paranoia over his job had definitely made him more reckless.

"I'll check into that, too."

"Be careful when you do."

"I will be," she assured him.

But despite her best attempts at being careful, the worst day of her week was quickly approaching, and it had other plans.

* * *

Work the next day was tense, but not in the way Sarah would have expected. There was no buzzing gossip around the office like there usually was after a major event, which Sarah thought was a good sign. It meant there still weren't many people at Orion that knew McDermott's death was related to Jason or her. Of course, that might be because from what she'd overheard the night before, Jason was slowly moving towards entrusting people outside the company with his dirty work.

More alarming was the fact that she didn't hear a single word from Jason himself. The incessant calls and texts that she'd been getting over the past few days had been replaced by total radio silence. When she had to call him to ask about scheduling an appointment she got no answer, which she honestly couldn't remember happening before.

Trying to keep her mind off the troubling implications of Jason's silence, Sarah took advantage of the uninterrupted time to finish all of the work that had been piling up all week. There was a lot of it, and it was already dark out by the time she walked out of the building. She called Matt on his burner once she was out of earshot of anyone inside.

"Hey," he answered. "Everything alright?"

"Um...I'm not sure, honestly. I mean, I'm fine," she assured him. "Nothing crazy happened, but something just—didn't feel right. I couldn't get a hold of Jason all day, which is…unusual. I don't like it," she said. "But I did find something that I think has to do with what those guys were talking about last night."

"I'm only a few blocks from your work right now. I can meet you and you can fill me in on your way home?"

Sarah glanced over her shoulder one more time as she turned a corner, making sure no one had followed her out the front doors of Orion.

"Okay. There's so much construction along my bus route anyway that walking home might actually be—" Sarah broke off with a startled gasp as she felt something cold and hard press against her back. She had never had a gun to her back, but the feeling was unmistakable.

"Sarah?" she heard Matt say on the other end of the line, but his voice sounded distant over the blood rushing in her ears.

"Give me the phone," the person behind her said. Sarah had been so busy keeping an eye on the Orion office that she hadn't noticed him come out of the shadows off to her right.

_Shit_. Was this a mugging? After everything that had happened, was she really getting mugged right now?

As she held the phone over her shoulder for him to take, she prayed he wouldn't have any interest in who she had talking to. But the man just ended the call and tossed the phone aside unceremoniously. She heard it skid across the pavement somewhere nearby.

"In here," he said, and she couldn't help thinking the voice sounded familiar. But she didn't have much time to think about it as he pushed her towards an opening in the middle of some papered construction paneling in front of a building down the block from Orion. The paneling had been up since 'The Incident' had destroyed a good part of the north side of the building, which the owners were still working on renovating. For the millionth time, Sarah cursed the stupid aliens that had caused these very conveniently placed construction sites to pop up all over Hell's Kitchen, open to anyone who had a weapon and was in search of some shadows to hide in.

She thought about trying to use her pepper spray. It was on her keychain, and she could probably reach it in time. The man was also close enough behind her that if she snapped her head back she could probably hit his windpipe right where Matt had showed her to. But one of the nasty parts about having a gun trained on you was that it was stupidly easy to get shot by accident while trying to fight someone off, and if this really was just a mugging she would rather let him take the four dollars in her wallet and go.

As soon as they were out of sight of the street, the man spun her around to face him, keeping the gun aimed directly at her. Sarah's eyes widened in shock when she recognized the face even in the dark.

" _Rob_?"

"Where is he?" Rob demanded. There was a slightly crazed look on his normally calm face.

Sarah kept her eyes trained on the gun in his hands, keeping her own hands up and open in front of her. "Where's who?"

Was he talking about Matt? Had he figured out her connection to Daredevil somehow?

"Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about!" he exclaimed, hysteria seeping into his voice. "My son! Where did you people take him?"

_His son?_ Sarah's heart sank as she put two and two together.  _Oh, God._

"I—I don't…" Sarah shook her head. "I'm sorry. I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes. Yes you do, you work for Jason and he's the one who sent them—I  _know_  you know. So tell me where he is."

"I don't know. I swear. I…I thought both of you left town after—"

"We tried." His voice was hard and bitter, but underneath Sarah could mostly just hear fear.

"Rob, listen to me," she said slowly. "Please. Whatever happened with your son, I wasn't involved."

" _You_  were the one who brought me that goddamn body in the first place!" he exclaimed. He punctuated his sentence by angrily waving the gun, and Sarah flinched. "I didn't ask for you to put that on me."

"I know. You didn't choose to get involved with any of this. Neither did I. We talked about that the night you drove me home. R-remember?"

She hoped that reminding him of a time when he decidedly  _didn't_  want to kill her might help him not want to shoot her in the face right now, and it did seem to be having some effect. He still looked distraught and angry, but there was uncertainty on his face now, too.

Somewhere in the shadows, Sarah heard the smallest sound of movement nearby. Nothing she would have even picked up on if she hadn't been listening for it.

"Rob, y-you're… _really_ going to want to put that gun down now," Sarah warned him in a last ditch attempt to save him some pain.

Rob hesitated.

"I can't. I can't put it down, not until I know where my son is."

"I don't  _know_  where he is," Sarah said. "But I can help you find him. We'll find him and you'll both get far, far away from all this. Okay? Let me…let me help you."

He stared at her, and with shaking hands he started to lower the gun just a fraction—

Then there was a burst of noise as several other Orion employees passed by on their way out of work. Their loud voices jarred Rob out of whatever calmness Sarah had nearly gotten him to, and he snapped the gun back up to aim it directly at her face again.

That seemed to be enough for Matt, who appeared out of the shadows so suddenly it startled Sarah despite her already knowing he was there. In one swift movement he seized Rob by the forearm, quickly disarming him. He held Rob's arm in a painful-looking twist with one hand and tossing the gun aside with the other.

"Jesus!" Sarah exclaimed, flinching as the gun clattered onto the ground.

"It's not loaded," Matt said. "Are you okay?"

Sarah's mouth hung open.

"It's not loaded?" she repeated. "I nearly peed myself, and it's not even loaded?"

Matt roughly let go of Rob, who stumbled backwards into the wall. He looked scared shitless of the masked man standing in front of him, and Sarah didn't blame him. Rob was about even with Matt's height, and definitely heavier, but even Sarah could tell he wasn't a fighter. The man hadn't even brought a loaded gun with him. She hoped that Matt recognized that despite the scene he'd come upon when he got there.

"Go easy," she whispered under her breath, quiet enough so Rob couldn't hear. She saw Matt pause, then give a short, barely perceptible nod.

"You're…you're him. The Devil," Rob said.

"Yeah. And you're a guy holding someone at gunpoint," Matt said, his voice low and gravelly.

He might have been trying to make it seem like he had no personal connection to Sarah—saving people from getting shot was, after all, kind of what he did—but he needn't have bothered. Rob was only focused on one thing.

"Listen—you can help me," Rob implored desperately. "They took my son. They took Tyler."

"Who did?"

" _Orion!_ " Rob exclaimed, jabbing a hand in Sarah's direction. "A couple hours ago. We were staying at a motel in Queens until I could get some more money together to leave town. Just for a night or two. I paid cash. I don't know how they found us there, but they did."

"Did they say anything when they took him?" Sarah asked. Rob's attention snapped towards her, and she half expected him to turn his anger on her again. But either he had temporarily exhausted his reserves or he was just too wary of yelling at her in front of the vigilante who was currently standing between them, because he answered her.

"They said that Jason was working on a way to fix what I did. I don't know, finding someone for the police to blame. They said if I went to the cops to tell them where the body really came from, they'll…" Rob's voice cracked, hopelessness seeping in. "They're going to kill him anyway. I know they are."

"No, they aren't," Sarah said. "We won't let that happen."

But despite the force in her voice, she knew they were no more convinced of that then she was.

"You have no idea where they would be keeping him?" Matt asked Rob.

"If I did, I'd be there."

Matt worked his jaw as he thought for a moment, then strode over to the front door of the semi-abandoned building. He threw his weight against it, using his shoulder to bust it open without much effort.

"Inside," he said to Rob, jerking his head towards the dark interior of the building.

Rob looked from Matt to Sarah, then back to Matt. He seemed reluctant to argue with the vigilante, who was clearly his best bet for getting his son back. He ducked through the doorway, and Matt followed.

Sarah lingered in the doorway, watching the two of them. Matt reached into one of the zippered pockets on his cargo pants and pulled out something long and thin that Sarah struggled to see in the dark.

"What will you—" Rob started to ask about the plan, but was cut off when Matt abruptly grabbed his wrist and pinned it to a nearby exposed metal pipe, securing them together with what Sarah now recognized was a zip tie. "What the hell? Let me out of this!"

"You're only going to put yourself and your son in danger if you try to get involved," Matt said evenly. "Let me care of it."

"And what, I just wait here to find out if my son is alive or not?"

"Yes."

Rob gave Matt and incredulous look before his eyes found Sarah lingering in the doorway.

"What about her?" he demanded.

Neither of them said anything for a beat. Sarah didn't want to make it obvious that she was working with Daredevil, but what did it really matter at this point? She'd already agreed to help Rob, so it was no secret she wasn't loyal to Orion.

"We'll bring your son back, Rob," she said softly. "Alive."

She felt bad about leaving Rob like that, tied to a pipe and unable to help save his own son. But she didn't know what other choice they had, so she followed Matt out of the building and back into the construction overhang.

Matt turned to her once they were alone again.

"Why do you keep saying 'we'?" he asked slowly.

"I have to come with you," she said. That much seemed obvious. All she'd ever been good for in this arrangement was getting information about Jason and passing it along to Matt to do the dirty work. But now Jason was making big moves and not letting her in on them. If she'd gotten herself tossed out of the inner circle, what help was she to anyone?

Matt let out a short, sharp bark of a laugh.

"No, you don't."

"I found the invoice for the building those guys were talking about. The one that just got the security upgrades. And I've been there, before they updated it. Most of the floors are below ground. You know that has to be where they're keeping Tyler."

"Then give me the address and that's where I'll go."

"What will you do when you get there?" she asked. "The whole place is locked up. Every room and every hallway."

"It's not hard to take keys from people."

"They're not keys, they're codes. For the keypads. And I think I know where to look for them at work."

Matt let out a frustrated sigh. "Even if I let you go back into Orion to get the codes, there's no reason for you to come to the building with me."

"Those keypads are all touch screens," she argued. "Even your senses can't work around those. But if I came—"

"It's not going to happen," he said flatly.

"It has to! You'd be risking that kid's life if you don't bring me. I know the layout, I can get the codes, and—well—I can actually use a touch screen. Why not use a resource if you have it?"

"You're not a resource to be used," he said through gritted teeth.

Sarah ignored him.

"What about when you actually get to Rob's son and have to convince him to come back here with you? I've met him, and talked to him. Just a little, but still. If you want him to run off into the night to some secret meeting spot, I think he's more likely to go with me than with…this," she said, gesturing to Matt's very unwelcoming costume.

"Sarah…" There was a warning edge to his voice; he wanted her to drop the idea, which meant it must have been making some sense.

"Please don't try to zip tie me to anything for saying this, but…I'm going to that building either way," she pointed out tentatively. Seeing the way his expression darkened, she quickly added, "And it seems a lot more likely that I'll get hurt if I have to go alone so you might as well let me come with you."

"Jesus Christ," he snarled under his breath.

"It's my fault that he's in there to begin with, Matt," she insisted softly. "I  _have_  to help."

Matt was silent a moment, and Sarah could see the telltale tick jumping in his jaw. Oddly, she took that as a good sign; if he was getting more pissed off, it was probably because he was running out of arguments for why she couldn't come with him.

"Fine."

Sarah let out a sigh of relief, but simultaneously a heavy weight of dread dropped into her stomach. Shit. She reminded herself that there was a teenage boy being held captive because of her, and a grief-stricken father waiting in an abandoned construction site, and she couldn't back out now.

"Good," she said, trying not to let the nervousness she was feeling slip into her tone. "I just need to grab my phone from wherever he threw it, and-"

She started to step around him, but Matt's hand shot out and closed around her arm, holding her in place with a surprisingly iron-like grip. Not painful, but just short of it, and more than enough to get her to look up at him in wide-eyed surprise.

"Listen. When we're in there, you have to do what I tell you," Matt said. "No questions."

She reminded herself that although this was technically the same person she'd just been making out with on a kitchen counter a few days prior, she effectively needed to treat him as someone else entirely. That had been Matt, all crooked grins and cocky flirtations. This was Daredevil, who was all business and had zero problems prioritizing her safety above her feelings at the moment. If she knew anything about Matt it was that he would take out anyone who posed a threat to the people he cared about, and right now Sarah was unfortunately both the one in danger and the one putting herself there, so she was receiving a strange mix of protectiveness and intimidation.

Matt was waiting for an answer, his mouth pressed into a tight line.

"Okay," she agreed.

"You stay out of sight. And if I tell you to run, you run."

"Okay."

"I'm not bringing you in there to get hurt. Okay?" he said.

" _Okay_ ," she repeated. "I get it. I trust you. We'll follow your plan."

She brought her hand up to his face, hoping to see just the smallest flash of Matt underneath the Devil. And a flash was all she got; the tension in his jaw relaxed almost imperceptibly when her fingers brushed against his temple. He turned his head and pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist for just a second, then let go of her other arm and stepped back, his demeanor turning business-like once again.

"Go get changed. Dark colors, something with a hood," he said. "I'll see if Rob knows anything else that can help us, and be there soon."

Sarah nodded and started to leave the enclosure, then she hesitated.

"You  _are_ going to meet me, right? You're not going to go there without me?"

"Not if I know you're just going to show up and get into trouble anyway," he said, sounding deeply irritated.

So threatening to put herself in danger was a successful tactic of getting around Matt's stubborn protectiveness. Interesting.

At home, Sarah discarded her work clothes and changed into a pair of dark jeans, a black hooded sweatshirt, and a pair of black sneakers. She pulled her hair into a tight bun, then glanced in the mirror. She looked a little like a cat burglar from a cartoon, but she supposed that was the point. Her phone buzzed and she answered it immediately.

"Hey."

"I'm on your roof," Matt said without preamble.

Sarah frowned up at the ceiling; she'd assumed they would be meeting in the alley behind her apartment, or at least somewhere on the ground.

"Uh…okay. I'll be up there in a second."

She grabbed the essentials—her stun gun, phone, and pepper spray—and slipped into the zippered pockets of her sweatshirt before leaving to meet Matt on the roof.

* * *

Matt waited for her near the corner of her apartment building's roof. He heard her light footsteps approaching, the sound of them softened by the rubber soles of a pair of sneakers.  _Good_.

"Why are we meeting up here?" she asked him.

"If you're insisting on coming with me, that includes getting there my way."

There was a silent pause, then Sarah's pulse quickened in trepidation.

"Your way being…rooftops," Sarah concluded, reluctance apparent in her tone.

"Yeah."

"Is this your way of trying to scare me out of coming with you?"

"It's the quickest route by far, and we don't have to worry about being seen," he explained calmly. "Plus, it'll give us an easier access point into the building."

Those  _were_  the main reasons for taking this route. If it also helped dissuade her from coming, that was a bonus.

"R-right," she said. "That…makes sense. And the buildings around here are all really close together, so it's not like we'd be  _jumping_ from building to building or anything...right?"

Matt heard the waver in her voice and stepped closer to her.

"You can still go back inside," he offered quietly.

For a brief, hopeful moment it seemed like maybe she would. He could feel the uncertainty radiating off her as she glanced over the edge of the roof, down at the ground far below them. But then she looked back at him, watching him for a long moment, and he wished not for the first time that he could see what expression was on her face. But instead, all he had to go on was the slight calming of her heartbeat as she looked at him, and a deep, steadying breath that he recognized well.

"No," she said. "I'm coming."

Matt was dismayed by her answer, but he couldn't say he was surprised. This stubborn tendency to  _not_ avoid danger was something that he'd learned about her immediately after the first time they'd met and he'd unsuccessfully tried to scare her into leaving town. In the time that had passed, he still hadn't decided if he thought it was her best quality or her worst one.

He pressed his lips together unhappily, but gave a short nod.

Sarah reached up and tugged his mask down over his eyes.

"Ready when you are," she said.

Matt sighed.

"Alright," he said. He reached around and flipped the hood of her sweatshirt up over her head, then held out a gloved hand for her to take. "Let's go."

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it was so long and that it took ten years to post, but I hope you guys liked it and are as excited for the next chapter as I am! If I haven't said it lately, y'all are the best readers anyone could ever hope for, and I so appreciate everyone who has checked in on me or reached out during some difficult times this past year. You guys are truly amazing.


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